Tenants Call Out Moncton Landlord For Dangerous Conditions, Shirking Repairs

MONCTON–Several renters are calling out a Moncton property management company for what they say is poor management and unsafe conditions in their units.

Tenants of K Squared Property Management say they faced multiple rent hikes in buildings that were horribly maintained and hastily repaired. They tell stories of broken doors letting in snow, heating their homes with ovens, the smell of “hot, rotting garbage” permeating their units, and more.

Jessica Comeau is about to move out of her K Squared-run apartment at 15 West Lane. She told Huddle that rising rents and a lack of renovations and improvements pushed her out.

“The first thing they did was bump the rent a couple of years ago before any restrictions were in place,” said Comeau. “People living there were paying cheap rent and accepting that the building was in slight disrepair.”

After the initial rent bump, the company raised rent twice more over a six-month period. The latest hike was on June 1, even though no improvements to the building had been made. In light of the province’s new rent cap, those rent hikes would now be considered illegal.

RELATED: Rent Cap Officially Takes Effect In New Brunswick

Comeau said the few attempts K Squared made to update and improve the property after those rent hikes turned out poorly.

In one incident, the company tried to plug a leak with spackle and drywall, but the hasty fix only rerouted the leaking water into the walls.

“My kitchen was on the other side of that wall and because of that we started to smell more moisture in our kitchen,” she said.

During her tenancy, Comeau said the company also pushed the costs of electricity onto tenants. However, some units shared wiring with common areas and tenants were getting hit with enormous utility bills for electricity they didn’t use.

In another incident, the company’s attempt to replace garbage bins resulted in a mismanaged mess that took months of complaints to fix. Comeau says the mess kept her from ever opening her windows because “it smelled like hot, rotting garbage.”

Broken Doors, Oven For A Heater

Frederica Beaulieu is another K Squared tenant. She told Huddle she’s been through the wringer with the company. She said her troubles came to a head after she ended up so desperate to keep her family warm in a Dieppe apartment she had to use the oven for heat.

Beaulieu and her family started renting from K Squared in March 2021 and shuffled through four different apartments during their time renting from the company.

Disagreements with the company about access to her apartment and spats with her neighbours found Beaulieu and her family cycling through several apartments between March and August.

By the end of August 2021, they had moved into a K Squared property in Dieppe, at 1294 Champlain Rue. Beaulieu said that location had broken stairs, damaged windows and doors, and a broken dryer.

Around the time she moved in Beaulieu found out she was pregnant. Despite promises from K Squared that the damage would be fixed, she said nothing was done over the winter and following spring.

In December, Beaulieu alleged her dog was injured by a broken door slamming on his tail. It was one of two doors that was letting snow and cold air into the unit. Citing compounding veterinary costs and power bills as high as $800, on top of the stresses of being pregnant, working, and supporting a family in a home she didn’t think safe, Beaulieu sought assistance from K Squared but found help.

By February, K Squared offered her a fourth apartment that was in much better condition. But when the company asked her for a $2,000 deposit, even though she’d already put down $1,500 for the unit she was in, she discovered none of her damage deposits had been filed with Service New Brunswick, which is illegal.

According to documents Beaulieu provided Huddle, she paid $960 toward the total of her rent for May, on April 20, about to go to the hospital to give birth. About a week later, she received a notice that K Squared staff planned to do a maintenance walk the following day with the building owner.

This maintenance walk resulted in the termination of her tenancy. During the walkthrough, the owner objected to Beaulieu using the basement of the unit and having pets on the premises–both stipulations she claims weren’t in her lease.

“They literally kicked us out with my five-day-old baby after the walkthrough,” Beaulieu said.

Beaulieu is now considering legal action over the emotional distress and costs of veterinary bills for her dog. She left her unit at the end of May, still owing K Squared $585 in unpaid rent.

“I had a rough month and it put me into a depression. We moved out a week ago and I haven’t cried once, I feel like the stress has left now that I’m not living in that house,” Beaulieu said.

K Squared Not Talking

In an online correspondence, K Squared staff told Huddle the company had no comment on the anecdotes its former tenants shared.

Willy Scholten, chair of the New Brunswick Apartment Owner’s Association, said he thinks the answer lies in finding a balance between tenant and landlord needs.

“Having rent controls in place with no control over cost is resulting in landlords trying to figure things out. While most landlords are very reasonable, I can say there is a fringe group that is not,” he said.

“In my mind, it’s about finding a balance and equal effort to control costs.”

A Growing Trend

Ryan Macneil, a renters’ advocate, notes that experiences like Beaulieu’s and Comeau’s are part of a pattern where property management companies are beholden to the wishes of owners – many of whom are out-of-province – leading to tenant rights violations.

Macneil said this often manifests in the form of renovictions. He said he knows two families displaced from their homes by renovictions and forced to live in homeless shelters.

These tenant accounts come only a couple of months after reports emerged of an online meeting where New Brunswick landlords and property managers discussed strategies and loopholes to get around the 2022 rent cap.

Macneil, who said he’s on a tenant blacklist kept by the New Brunswick Apartment Owners Association – a group that participated in the aforementioned online meeting – knows tenants who have seen landlords “using every reason possible to do renovations in the unit, no matter what it is, so they can evict the tenant and increase the rental price.”

Macneil said the spiking cost of rent is the result of out-of-province buyers scooping up property for sometimes hundreds of thousands of dollars above market price. That’s making it more difficult for the renovicted to find somewhere to live.

“They’re blind bidding and they push that onto tenants. Generally, I’m finding it’s a lot of people on low incomes who are worst affected. They’re not able to afford larger rents,” he said.

Macneil has also heard horror stories from tenants too fearful of the repercussions to come forward with anecdotes.

“They don’t want to bring their names forward because their landlords would literally change the locks on their doors overnight,” he said.

He stressed that the province’s rent cap is not enough to protect tenants from wrongful evictions and says more protections need to be in place for both tenants and landlords.

“There need to be better protections in place for landlords against people who ditch out on rent. We need a permanent rent cap, and renovictions to be outlawed, and we need renovations only to be done [during a tenancy] if it’s an emergency,” he said.

“Right now, owners are using any little thing, like ‘it needs a new coat of paint,’ or ‘the floors are scraped up and we need to put new ones in.’”

Sam Macdonald is a Huddle reporter in Moncton. Send him your feedback and story ideas: [email protected].