17 Halifax Renters Safe from Renoviction after Landlord Drops Appeal
HALIFAX– The remaining residents of 71 Primrose Street just learned that they won’t be evicted, ending a months-long battle to stay in their homes.
Seventeen tenants have been fighting to stave off renoviction from the building’s landlord, AMK Barrett Investments. In April, a residential tenancy officer ruled that AMK didn’t meet the threshold for a renoviction. But the landlord decided to appeal the ruling.
The hearing for the appeal was set to take place on June 26. But, at the last minute, AMK withdrew. Fifteen of the 17 tenants were being represented by Dalhousie Legal Aid Service. There are 23 total units in the building but six tenants have already left after reaching a financial deal with AMK.
The impact of this ruling on the tenants is, in many cases, enormous. By modern Halifax standards, the rent these tenants were paying was from a different era. The hearing for one of the tenants revealed that they were paying $690 per month, even though they only moved in back in 2020.
The landlord had planned to up the rent of the units to $1,500 per month if the renoviction was successful, according to a document from the hearing in April.
“That’s why it was really important for the tenants in this building to protect their periodic leases,” stated Joanne Hussey of Dalhousie Legal Aid. “Maintaining their leases means that their rents can only increase by the five per cent rent cap.”
“It’s important for landlords to understand that if you buy a building, that you shouldn’t necessarily expect to be able to evict those people and charge more. There must be some limits on that when we know that there’s a good chance that these folks are going to end up in a shelter or hotel or in a tent.”
Although 17 tenants were fighting to stay in the building, each case had to be handled at separate hearings. That made it a busy case for Dalhousie Legal Aid, which represented 15 of the affected people.
For much of the Covid-19 pandemic, the province put special rules in place banning renovictions. But, in March of 2022, it lifted that ban. Landlords now must show that a renovation is so extensive that they have no choice but to evict tenants. Even if an eviction is justified, tenants are entitled to up to three months’ rent as compensation.
But, under the current rental climate, many tenants are fighting to stay in their affordable, older, buildings rather than take the money.
April’s residential tenancy hearings focused mainly on how worn down 71 Primrose Street is. The landlord gave a huge list, including mold, leaking pipes, old water lines, old wiring, and more.
But the tenants, many of whom lived at 71 Primrose for more than a decade, testified that there were no such serious issues with molds or leaks. Previous building supers also testified about previous renovations that have been done over the past decade.
Both Joanne Hussey and the residential tenancy officer also noted that the landlord’s scope of work was different when he applied for a building permit with the city of Halifax. According to the officer, the permit was for replacing bathroom fixtures, flooring, kitchen cabinets, doors, windows, and other cosmetic work.
“The permit seemed to be for very cosmetic, surface things,” said Hussey. “Whereas at the Residential Tenancies hearing, it was suggested there were more serious issues. In the decision, they point to the fact that there was never any evidence provided to support that from the landlord. Obviously, they would have had the opportunity to do that in the appeal if they had moved forward.”
Hussey says Dalhousie Legal Aid is seeing a lot more of these cases: landlords make changes to older buildings but only surface changes. They then use those changes to justify evictions and huge rent hikes.
“This is a business practice that we’ve seen become more common over the last four or five years in Halifax, where landlords purchase lower-rent buildings, make some cosmetic upgrades, and then are able to rent the unit for more than it was rented for before.
“This kind of repurpose or repositioning of the building has been the reason behind a lot of these eviction notices and I think that’s why the government moved to put these conditions in the Residential Tenancies Act in 2022.”
In the end, the officer ruled that the work required to be done on 71 Primrose doesn’t require a renoviction. He also ruled that there was no evidence of mold damage or water leakage.
“I do not believe that the landlord is acting in good faith…” he stated in April, regarding the Residential Tenancies Act.
Even though this decision was made during a hearing for just one of the Primrose tenants back in April, the officer stated that he was using the same ruling for all of the disputes in the same building.
Hussey says this ruling shows just how important the new renoviction rules are in protecting tenants’ rights at a time when affordable rent is almost impossible to find in Halifax.
“What we’re seeing is that people really don’t have very many options of where to go once they’re given an eviction notice. I think that we have these rules to say ‘these are the situations when this is appropriate. And these are the situations where it’s not appropriate, because people need to have a place to live.’”
“We had a really significant increase in people coming to us to talk about renovations in the spring. And most of the time when we hear from one tenant, it’s usually the entire building being affected. This is one of four buildings that we’ve been involved with in the last few months.”
Derek Montague is a Huddle reporter in Halifax. Send him your feedback and story ideas: [email protected].