Hi, I’m Bill Biko and I have been a landlord since 2003. We have had regular property where we rent condos, suited properties and even townhouses and duplexes. We also operated shared accommodation or rooming house properties.At our peak we had over 50 rooms that we rented out on a weekly basis, with a 25% or higher turnover a month.
This worked out to well over 200 new tenants each year and due to the setups for these properties, there was little screening involved and they weren’t always the best types of tenants. While we have had a few tenant evictions in our regular properties over the years, the rooming houses really educated us on how to get rid of deadbeat tenants and it’s this eduction we gained that I can help to pass on to other landlords.
I’ve had experience using professional eviction services initially, then learning to use the new Residential Tenancy Dispute Resolution Services and even to the point of becoming a source of information for landlords with problem tenants.
Hopefully you find the information helpful for you in your circumstance.
Bill Biko
bill@housez.ca
403-870-4663
So grateful. Hope it is everything I need it to be. Shannon
Thanks Shannon,
Hopefully your eviction works out successfully and thanks for the great comments and questions you have left!
Bill
Thanks Bill – just saw the ad in the Anchor advertising this site….. have passed it on to another new landlord…… always appreciate your input and advice..
Hi Colleen,
Thanks for commenting! Just thought you should know you are part of the reason I wrote the guide! I still remember first meeting you at the RTDRS and how I was able to help you get through some of the confusing aspects of all the paperwork and the processes! Thankfully it worked out for you and I hope you are doing well.
Bill
Hi Bill:
Thanks for all the great info and links on your site. You used to have a page about the Alberta Innkeepers Act, posted on Nov 19, 2010. It is not showing up as a valid link anymore from Google, but there was a cached page I could look at. Is this information still valid?
I have a couple of rooms in my basement in Edmonton that I rent out to people who present themselves as having good character (I have two young children upstairs). Recently, I had a problem with one fellow who was bothering the other guest by making meals, doing dishes (disturbances) after midnight. I told him when he came in that this was an Inn under the AB Innkeepers Act (I have the required posting on the inside of the doors of the bedrooms), so I asked him to cease and desist which mostly he did, but there was still a real personality conflict between the two guests. Ultimately, I gave him 59 days notice to vacate at the end of July 2011, plenty of time to find a place. He kept saying that he wasn’t leaving and at the beginning of July refused to pay rent. On July 8, I gave him a notice to pay up by Monday the 11th or else leave. He didn’t pay, so as per my rights (I thought) under the Innkeepers Act I changed the locks and retained his stuff until he came up with a payment. Yesterday I allowed him to come and pick up his food and clothing without any payment and after he had done so, he delivered me a letter from a lawyer which he had gotten through Legal Aid which stated that I had no rights under the Innkeepers Act and that they would go to Court of Queens Bench for “an application for Replevin”.
Do these people have a winable case and what resources are there that would help me? Thanks so much for any suggestions that you can provide.
Sincerely,
Ken.
Hi Ken,
Thanks for notifying me about that, were you finding it via a Google search, or did you try it off of the site? The page is still up and not much has changed with the information that I am aware of. Here is the actual link if it helps, Innkeepers Act Versus RTA.
In answer to your question, most importantly you need to know I am not a lawyer and this is just my opinion but, from everything you tell me, it sounds like you won’t have a problem, other than you will end up wasting a bunch of your time. Since he is using Legal Aid, his court costs will be zero and he is just cluttering up the court system and wasting tax dollars (again in my opinion and from what I am reading here). So even if he is wrong it doesn’t matter, of course the question is why would Legal Aid think they would win.
If the property does indeed fit under the Innkeeper’s Act, it’s pretty cut and dried, he broke the rules and didn’t pay, so you followed the Act. So his lawyer will have to prove you fit under Residential Tenancy Act for their case to hold water. This falls into line with what you said about you having no rights under the Innkeepers Act. If you can prove you are renting rooms in your private home with shared access to the property no problem. If the lower unit has separate suites, then it’s a problem.
Replevin is a legal remedy for someone to try and get back goods held by someone illegally. So he is just saying you are holding his goods illegally, which again isn’t true if he owes you money and you fall under the Innkeeper’s Act. Your options at this point are to read through the Act and make sure everything sounds good and you fit all the qualifications and to make sure everything you do points back to this staying under the Innkeepers Act. If it looks like you fall under RTA, then you will have other problems, but can probably just return his stuff and walk away from the money owed (yes it sucks), but it would likely end there.
Some of your options are, you can try and defend yourself in court, or hire your own lawyer to fight it or contact the other lawyer (if he will talk to you) and negotiate. Perhaps they will agree to a partial payment to get the goods back, or they may want to be hard nosed and see what they can do, you never know until you try. It may come down to how badly you want the money or how bad you want this over, although it really sounds like you did everything correctly.
However it ends up, there are a couple lessons here. First, it’s not worth giving someone extra time if there is a problem. As bad as it sounds, being nice as a landlord when you are evicting someone rarely turns out in your favor. Follow the rules, explain why they have to leave and stick to your guns, you are probably off their Christmas list anyway as you are kicking them out.. Second, if you fit under the Innkeeper’s Act one of your biggest benefits is the police. They will come to assist you in removing a tenant who is being evicted and you will have the benefit of having the law on your side. This can be huge leverage if someone is unwilling to leave, especially if you explain there options, leave now, or I will call the police and they will help you leave.
Again, I’m not a lawyer, I don’t have all the facts and I might be missing something important here, but from my understanding of the information provided, it’s my opinion that you won;t have a problem winning.
Hope that helps,
Bill
Hi Bill:
My nephew is in a position where he was dating a girl (who is bi-polar, etc), bought a house in his name only, the lived common law for a year after he purchased the house. The relationship turned sour and he asked her to leave. She refuses. The RCMP were called one night when she was assulting him, they told him he had to leave as she had no place to go and he could go and stay with his mom. They have talked to a lawyer, who said that he has to prove that she is a renter. She does get money from Calgary Housing Authority to cover rent, (although she is not paying a cent) but the Housing Aughorithy will not give them a copy of the lease agreement due to confidentiality and she refuses to give them a copy herself. This has been going on for months. He has given her a written eviction notice, told her numerous times that she has to be out by a certain date and she still refuses. Any help would be appreciated.
Hi Jan,
You have a bit of a problem as you are caught between a common law living arrangement and a Residential Tenancy Dispute. Without a copy of the lease there is nothing to prove she is a tenant versus a spouse. Will the Housing Authority provide a letter verifying she is receiving assistance versus the actual lease copy or Rental assistance form? This might be one tact.
The other issues I see from this are that since they did live common law for a year, she may actually have rights to a portion of the house, just like in a regular divorce. I’m not sure of the time frame common law arrangements require to qualify as divorces, but I seem to think it is a year. Second issue is that your nephew would have had to sign a rental assistance form and submit it to the Housing Authority in order for her to receive her payments. Since it sounds like this money never actually went towards rent, this could easily fall under the fraud category. The question being was he fraudulent in signing the paperwork allowing to receive Calgary Housing payments, or was she fraudulent in accepting the money and not actually paying him. This brings it back full circle to needing a copy of the original lease, or if no lease exists, then this essentially is a divorce, someone was fraudulently receiving funds from the Calgary Housing and the situation I previously mentioned comes back up.
Without that lease or verification she was getting rental money from the Calgary Housing Authority, it will be an uphill struggle trying to evict her. He will have to figure out how to get one or the other and then at that point he can go through the RTDRS to get her evicted. Alternatively, if she pushed that they lived common law, and he was making the mortgage payments, she may have defrauded Calgary Housing. The lesson to be learned fro this is that you need to keep all your documentation in order to be able to evict a tenant, otherwise it becomes he said she said or worse case, as in this scenario, he could potentially lose a portion of his equity to this person as part of a divorce settlement.
I’m not a lawyer, so you may want to get some expert legal advise, but this is how it appears to me with the information you have provided so far, not sure if it helps, but it may clarify where you sit right now.
Regards,
Bill
lousy info. Scaaaaaaaaaaaaaam!!!!!!!
Somehow I think this wasn’t really a landlord, but rather a tenant leaving this comment? But just to humour you, Mr.Robert Janik, what info do you feel is so lousy?
Bill
So just to follow up on this, I left Robert Janik (I’m assuming that is his name as his email address he left was robertjanik@gmail.com) a comment her to let me know what he felt was so lousy about my info and I also emailed him at the email address he left. At this juncture I’m pretty confident in saying, our poster was likely a tenant who doesn’t like people learning how to evict him.
As I’ve mentioned several other times to other tenants who have left me comments or feel I only help landlords, I help people who are abusing the system. If you are a landlord and you have a tenant not paying you, damaging your property or generally causing problems for you, this site can help. If you are a tenant who has a landlord who has turned off the utilities, doesn’t make necessary repairs and treats you like crap, I can likely help you as well.
There are rules in place to help protect both sides, and there are reasons the rules are in place. I don’t necessarily agree with all of them, but this site can still help. When I have people leave comments like Mr. Janik above (if that’s his or her real name), it raises my hackles so to speak. then when they don’t come back to justify their comments I’m left leaving messages like this.
The only positive, if this turns out to be their real email address, is that now when a landlord searches for them online they should find this series of comments, on an eviction site, which may raise a few red flags about why a tenant was looking up eviction information and calling it a scam.
Regards,
Bill
P.S. I did a search on the email address and found no other references on line to that address.
I think someone must have just had a bad day or lhe’s not a landlord but a bad tenant. I just want to say that the information you provided me in my venture to evict saved us a lot of time and money. We started out trying to go to court but with your help we found out that this wasn’t necessary and proceeded without having to go to court. The bad tenant was trying to get us to take them to court just to waste our time and money but had no choice in the end to leave with the help of the police.
So thank you so much Bill, you provide very valuable information.
Thanks Joan, glad I could help!
Bill
Honestly I had to smile at Robert Janik’s comment. It just seemed so absurd and unrelated to anything I had experienced using AlbertaEviction. As an Alberta landlord, this site has been THE most useful site I have come across, partly because there is so much useful information on it but also because it is all about Alberta’s landlord and tenant laws. Everytime I have a question, I can usually find the answer somewhere on the site, or if not, Bill has kindly answered my questions through e-mail. I recommend AlbertaEviction to every landlord that I meet, and without fail when I speak with any of them after, all I hear is how helpful they have found the information listed here as well. I personally love all the proactive landlording tips Bill e-mails out, but I have also used the site to walk me through a difficult eviction. Bill was able to educate us about a particular law that fit our circumstances and we ended up getting that particular tenant out way faster than we ever could have without Bill’s help. I encourage Mr. Janik, if he is indeed a landlord, to try the site again. Clearly he has misunderstood.
Hi Bill,
Jut want to say thank you from the bottom of my heart, you were amazing walking me through the painful eviction process of my bad tenant. They came with a lot of pathetic stories from Ontario as a couple, but made life like hell for us from 2months after; and finally didn’t pay for the last month of rent, asked me to use their security deposit, damaged the property, and left without my keys and was going to post it to me. I was devastated, furious and confused; but Bill was helpful all through the way with helpful tips and follow up on steps to take etc. with constant email almost daily. He responded to them all with helpful tips all the way.
Thanks again Bill.
I had just purchased the package from you and everything looks good. I have a rental property with rent at $1700/month. In our Lease Agreemement we have a late payment penalty ($50 per day)
My concerns:
1: Rent is has been late for the past 4-5 months
2: This month, it is late (we have recieved partial payment)
3: The condition of the property is on a steady decline
is the $50/day an extreme amount, and are the tenants expected to pay this? They have claimed to contact the Landlord Tenant Board and was advised that they do NOT need to pay late payment penalties.
They said they will have the remaining rent payment on Dec 23 (13 days from now)
we have not served them a 14 day eviction notice yet, should we bypass the 14 day eviction notice and proceed to file a claim with RTDRS?
Would the time of year (christmas) have an effect of eviction?
Would the tenant being on medical leave from work (missing work) for 2 weeks, causing a reduced income effect the eviction process?
If we file with the RTDRS, do they still have the 7 days or whatever the length is to pay the remainder of the rent?
If eviction is carried out, how do we ensure that their stuff is gone? How long do they have before i can go in and change locks and start cleaning/repairing the house?
Sorry for the boatload of questions, but as you can tell, its a huge problem
Thank you!
Hi Dustin,
After reading your situation, I would highly suggest you skip the 14 day eviction notice and proceed directly to the RTDRS on the grounds of continually beaching the lease and paying late. It’s highly unlikely they will be changing the way they pay and if you go with a straight 14 day eviction notice for late rent this month, if they pay the rent in full before the eviction date, the eviction notice becomes null and void, meaning you are right back where you were.
Eviction notices are highly effective as evidence and as warnings, but if they don’t leave, you still have to go to court or the RTDRS. It doesn’t sound like they are leaving, so why go through this again?
I also would include the steady decline of the property and any other breaches, you don;t want to give them any wiggle room. When it comes down to paying your rent, it doesn’t matter if it’s winter, if it”s Christmas or if it’s due to being injured or laid off. There can sometimes be compassionate reasons for delays or extended time, but the tenants have a commitment to pay, much like you have a commitment to keep the property at a certain standard. You will have issues over Christmas with availability of hearings and ease of moving for the tenants though, so don;t delay and get this started ASAP.
As for your penalty, it’s not excessive, it’s just unenforceable. The law states you cannot penalize tenants for paying late (stupid rule in my opinion, as the banks seem to be able to get away with it!). As a landlord I have similar penalties in my leases and I use them to reinforce why rent has to be on time. If you go to the RTDRS, don’t include these penalties as part of the money owed as it will be voided and if they have paid in the past, there is a chance you may have to refund these penalties. In the end they will still be responsible for paying the outstanding rent so if they do pay and you are evicting for reasons other than outstanding rent this month only, but rather continually being late, they will still have to go.
If you go through the RTDRS, once the eviction date has come and you confirm they have left you can change the locks. If they haven’t gone by the court ordered eviction date, you can bring in the bailiffs to enforce the eviction and then change the locks. Priority for you at this time is to start compiling information and get ready to go in Monday and file with the RTDRS if applicable in your area (Calgary and Edmonton are not a problem, areas in Southern Alberta do not have RTDRS services yet).
Hope that points you in the right direction Dustin!
Let me know if you have more questions I will be checking email and the site randomly over the weekend and will answer when I can.
regards,
Bill
P.S. Thanks for purchasing my forms package, if you also need the RTDRS guide, there is a discount coupon code included in the forms package you can use, so be sure to find it first.
From what I can see in the RTA and the code of practice ( http://www.servicealberta.gov.ab.ca/1187.cfm#LatePay ) it doesn’t appear that late fees are unreasonable. $50/day, though, might be seen as unreasonable. A one time fee of $50 probably would not.
The tough part is the fee cannot be a penalty and fees for paying late can be deemed as penalties by hearing officers. Often they just throw them out. Even excessive NSF charges will get thrown out, as they can also be deemed penalties. To collect these often the hearing officers will want to see the actual charge you incurred and allow you to pass that on only. Again this isn’t written in stone but is generally how it occurs, soem hearing officers make exceptions.
Regards,
Bill
Bill, thank you very much for your eviction guide and help in dealing with our problem tenants. We wish we had found your site and purchased your guide earlier, as the information has been very useful. We appreciate your quick email responses to the questions we had.
Thanks to you our bad tenants and stress are now gone.
Thanks Doug and Susan,
I’m glad I was able to help!
Bill
the best info i have ever received about the eviction process …bill has been fantastic !!! thanks again
Thanks Ben,
Glad I could help!
Bill
Hi we have a tenant that is late every month this month they say cant pay until the last day they always claim they will pay on a certain date and never do but days later always excuses ( coincidence that sickness, deaths, empoyer not paying always same day of the month the 1st day rent due. i am tired of chasing, they were on a longterm lease with an increase that i said after the forth month i would inforce. was toold they are looking for other property to rent. can i evict by email as i do not live near by but 7 hours away? what should i do. please advise Rae
Hi Rae,
You are supposed to deliver the eviction notice in person, but if you can deliver it via email and confirm they received it, it might work for you or at the very least light a fire under them. Perhaps a better solution would be to have someone you know post/deliver the notice to them locally.
Also, if you are serious about getting them out, you should bypass the eviction notice and simply go straight to the RTDRS or the courts and start the eviction immediately. This can save a couple weeks of time if they plan on fighting the eviction or if you believe they won;t leave by the eviction date. You can do much of the RTDRS process (if the area your property is located in is served by the RTDRS) via phone and fax.
Regards,
Bill
Hi,
I rented a bedroom out in my basement at the start of the month. The tenant has access to my kitchen, so the agreement we signed was a room agreement not covered under RTA I assumed.
Anyway, to cut a long story short. 1 of his cheques bounced shortly after he moved in and he kept saying i’ll have the money in a few days etc. He stays in my house ALL day drinking and I recently caught him smoking inside my house! After a few arguments that came close to blows, I gave him a notice to vacate letter.
I also have 2 young children on a biweekly basis and basically had to stay at friends house this weekend, waiting for the termination date to expire which is today. I drove past this morning and his car is still at my house. What are my options, to get my house back ASAP I can’t live like this anymore. I’m thinking of just going down to the basement and chucking his stuff on the front lawn. Help please..
Hi Gerald,
If you rented out the bedroom and have shared common areas, you fit under the Innkeeper’s Act and the not the Residential Tenancy Act. You could have skipped the notice to vacate letter and told him to leave, especially after catching him smoking.
If he is not gone by the time you get home, tell him he has 30 minutes or you will call the police to escort him off the property. If he is belligerent, call them right away. Innkeeper’s Act is entirely different than Residential Tenancy and as long as you inform the police that you fall under the Innkeeper’s Act you can make this a very short lived issue.
Regards,
Bill
Hi Bill,
I phoned the Police this morning, just to get some information on what I can do tonight. The operator said, the Police can’t get involved in domestic disputes unless it turned violent.
They said I’d have to apply for a court order to evict, I did tell the operator it was a room I rented in my shared basement. Maybe the Police operator was confused that shared living space doesn’t fall under RTA.
So, just to confirm if the guy is still in my house tonight, I can call 911 and have him removed? To be honest I’d like to follow up with a restraining order, so he never comes back and for the safety of my twin 8 year olds.
Thank You..
Hi Gerald,
This seems to come up quite often. There is often confusion between what the police can do and where the RTA versus the Innkeeper’s differ. Under the RTA, you go through the courts to remove tenants, under the Innkeepers Act, the police can escort the tenants off the property and then the tenants can come through small claims court to resolve any issues. In your case and from what you have told me, it sounds like you have a room you rent out and share the rest of the house, this means the RTA doesn’t apply.
Under the Innkeeper’s Act you are similar to a hotel. If a guest in a hotel becomes unruly, they call the police and he is escorted out of the building. It works the same way in your situation. I wouldn’t recommend calling 911 unless it is a real emergency though, I would just use the main police number and call it, it might take an extra couple of hours, but the process will be started. Again, if he is aggressive and you have concerns about safety or damage, then it’s up to you whether you call 911.
Regards,
Bill