Landlord and Tenant: Let's Get Personal…

Miami, FLThis is about Landlord and Tenant rights, taken from the tenant's point of view. And this also gets personal, because this is about me. And this is what happens when no one does anything, to right a wrong.

And the wrong, was that four children were made to shiver through a merciless Canadian winter, without heat…

When my parents split up we were living in Miami at the time. Dad stayed behind in the States, while my mother took the children to Canada, where we had family. However, the family connection proved little help: my father's side of the family was pretty much forbidden, or at least felt they were forbidden to contact us out of allegiance to my father. And my mother had had a falling out with her side of the family and would not entertain even the mere thought of help, of any kind.

So we were on our own. My mother was a housewife in the traditional sense, and had nothing to offer the working world. She had no viable skills to offer an employer. Thus she had no skills and no job, supporting four children on a fixed income from Canadian social assistance. And the only place we could afford, were two ground-floor rooms in a rooming house full of drunks and ne'r-do-wells, across from the town jail.

It was bad enough that we were cramped, and scared. You could hear the cursing from other tenants reverberate up and down the halls. The family who lived in a rather dandy little apartment in the basement beside the bathroom spent all their time fighting. We would live with those arguments too, as the sound careened up through the furnace vents.

The place smelled, and the basement bathroom to which we were assigned often went days with someone's spilled vomit, the aftermath of a drunken binge. I would clean it up the best I could with toilet paper, and what I couldn't get would eventually dry out and things would smell a bit better.

Worst of all, was the cold. We moved in at the beginning of September, and while the nights were a bit chilly as the season progressed through fall, it wasn't much different than waking up at the family cottage during happier times up north, greeted by the early-morning chill of a late August dawn. Besides, the furnace in the old rooming house hadn't kicked in yet. Or so we thought…

As November rolled into December we realized what was going on. We were actually assigned two rooms on the lower floor of the house, at the front, within an enclosed front porch. And while the furnace ducts were duly extended out to the renovation, there was no insulation in the walls, or ceiling. These rooms were meant for summer use only. However, the nasty old girl who owned the place knew she had a steady income from this hapless mother with her four children on social assistance, happily collected the rent each month, and did nothing.

We froze. We had to sleep in our coats. We had one, full-length snowmobile suit amongst the five of us, and we took turns with that. My mother had a stove over in her room, and she used that for heat. Sleeping arrangements originally had my sister and my youngest brother bunking over there with her, while my other brother closer to my age would bunk with me across the hall. But as fall turned to winter, he opted to join the rest of the clan in the slightly warmer room, across the hall. There was no room for me. I was left to go it alone, shivering through the night. A small refrigerator in my room threw off a bit of heat from the condenser, but not enough to make any difference.

Meanwhile, the rest of the house was warm, if not hot. The ancient old furnace was doing its job. But our situation on the front porch would be akin to piping the warm air directly outside. What's the point?

Just before Christmas two things happened: the landlord got her hydro bill and must have realized my mother was running the stove 24/7 to keep warm…and an interior room adjacent to my mother's suddenly became available. It was empty and not making the landlady any money anyway, so the French doors were opened and we had access to a bit more space. And thank God, there was heat.

But not where I was. And even with the extra space, it was long and narrow and cluttered, and no room to sleep even if I was on the floor. So I wound up spending cold nights, alone, shivering in sub-zero temperatures, sleeping in my parka in the depth of the unforgiving Canadian winter, in an enclosed but un-insulated porch.

We were out of there by March, having found a dandy (and warm) house to rent. But the six months we had spent in that horrendous old rooming house has had a lasting effect on our family, and on me. The experience saw me as an adolescent with no friends, and no support system. I was the oldest, so I took the brunt of everything. And to this day I have little patience for the cold. The experience indelibly marked my siblings too, in ways not too far removed from my own scars, both emotional and otherwise. And today, I can drive by that old rooming house, which has been restored by new owners, and shudder. They've opened up the porch again, exposing the area where I slept to the street. Even in the heat of July, I shiver every time I see it.

The point of this story? Tenants have rights, and we didn't exercise them. My mother was too timid and too kind-hearted, whereas at 13, I was hardly old enough to take matters into my own hands. We should have had the right to a safe environment, with heat for God sake. But we couldn't even lock the doors at night. The French doors to our porch-like rooms had no locks. We were cold, and we were vulnerable.

What should have happened is that a call should have gone out to a Legal Aid lawyer. The landlord should have been made to insulate those rooms, and put locks on the doors—or at the very least assign us to another area of the house that was warm, and secure. We should have pursued the old girl for damages.

But no one did anything, and that's the lesson here. Unless the tenant is completely irresponsible when it comes to conduct, and care of the space and grounds that are being rented, the tenant and not the landlord is in the driver's seat, in most situations. Provided you pay your rent and take reasonable care of your surroundings, a landlord cannot easily evict you, berate you, or go through your home without due notice and protocol. A landlord has to make sure that the plumbing doesn't leak that would otherwise invite mold into your space. You should be able to lock your door at night. And in the dead of winter, you should have adequate heat.

If you have a landlord who is making life hell for you, do something. If you can't afford a lawyer, check into Legal Aid or some other kind of assistance, or find someone who will help you pro bono. But don't let them get away with it. Fight back.

Do it for your kids. Where your kids call home is more than just a roof over their heads. And I can speak from experience when I say that a poor home environment for even a couple of months can last a lifetime. If your kids are just into their formative years, they will be experiencing things now that will affect them for the rest of their lives.

Don't let that happen. Call a lawyer now…