Tenants 'stunned' by eviction days after apartment sprinkler system floods some units

On a freezing cold night on the first weekend in February, residents of a building in Lower Sackville, N.S., woke to a blaring alarm at 3:30 a.m. Water was pouring from the ceiling down the walls in some apartments. 

The building's sprinkler systems had malfunctioned in temperatures diving below –20. 

Five apartments were damaged, some worse than others. The affected tenants, many of them seniors, packed what they could and tried to find somewhere to stay. Some went with family, some slept on neighbours' couches. 

They all expected to return to their homes on 129 Walker Ave. when the water was cleaned up and the units were repaired. 

But a few days after the flood, the residents of the damaged apartments were served eviction notices by employees of Montgomery Properties Ltd.

They were told their homes had been condemned by the landlord's insurance adjuster, meaning their tenancy was terminated and they had less than a week to clean up their things and not return. 

"I didn't know what to do," said Elizabeth Muise, one of the tenants. "I was just stunned, I couldn't believe it. We had five days to pack up that whole apartment."

Muise, 83, has lived in the building for close to seven years. She had tenant insurance, but the company didn't get back to her before she had to move.

Muise is now living with her daughter. Because of Halifax's record increase in average rent and low vacancy rate, she doesn't think she will ever be able to rent again. 

"You can't get anything," she said. "I tried one place, but we're fixed income people, you know? It's terrible."

Along with the eviction notice, Muise and the other affected tenants were returned their February rent and damage deposit. All but one took it and left. 

The tenants were told when the repairs were complete, they could sign a new lease with a higher rent. 

What they didn't know is they had a right to a hearing to determine if their tenancy was truly terminated, or if they had a right to return on the same lease after the repairs.

CBC News spoke to tenants in five of the flooded units. Most didn't know their rights and were scared to fight the eviction. Only one tenant refused the eviction notice and booked a hearing with Nova Scotia's residential tenancies program. 

'The lease is still intact'

If a unit is deemed unfit to live, or if a landlord is using that as a reason to start an eviction, the first step is to serve the tenant an eviction notice called a Form F.

But Michelle Waye, the director in charge of the residential tenancies program, said this doesn't mean the tenant's lease is void. 

"A tenant at that point can agree to leave, or if they don't agree to leave, the landlord has to take the next step by pursuing an application with the residential tenancies program," Waye said in an interview.

"So until that stage is done and a decision is rendered, the lease is still intact."

Waye said the residential tenancies officer who presides over the hearing would take into account all the evidence on both sides and determine the next steps.

"If the municipality or the fire marshal's office issues an order and deems a building uninhabitable, then the order must be abided to," she said. "In this case, since it's an insurance company, I think that the ... decision that was made by the insurance adjuster needs to be tested as a part of the hearing."

In any case, Waye said it is "incorrect" to give the tenants the impression that they must leave their unit right away. 

Superintendents quit in protest

Wanda and Allan Burns, the building superintendents of 129 Walker Ave., were originally asked by the owner of Montgomery Properties, Ziad Haddad, to hand out the eviction notices to the tenants.

That's when they had to make a difficult decision.

"When we said no, we wouldn't do it, he called us up and said, 'I will get somebody else to do it,'" Wanda Burns said. "And I told him, 'That's not the point. What you're doing is morally wrong.'"

Burns said she and her husband quit in protest, losing both their apartment and their employment. 

Burns has been in the rental business on-and-off for 20 years. She said she's worked for Montgomery Properties for the past nine years and has never been asked to do something like this. It shocked her. 

"These are our seniors, and they are being put out of their homes," she said. "Allan and I could not sleep at night and put our head on a pillow knowing they have no home. I couldn't be part of that."

She believes the tenants didn't need to be evicted for the repairs to be done.

"I understand that two apartments were really damaged and they couldn't stay in there while the work was being done," she said. "I totally understand that. But the rest of them were quite fine to be left in there and to be worked around."

Burns said the affected tenants had always paid their rent on time and kept their apartments in pristine condition. She said now, through no fault of their own, some have nowhere to go. 

No comment from landlord

CBC called and emailed Haddad and his company, but they did not respond to an interview request. 

Melvin Gale and Beverly Morrison are one of the couples Burns was referring to. 

They've lived in the building for five years, and are currently staying on a neighbour's couch. Gale said their insurance will pay for living expenses for a few months, but after that, they don't have a plan. 

"I don't know what we're going to do," he said. "We're on pensions, so if we're going to end up paying $1,800, $2,000 a month, it's just not going to happen." 

"We're going to have to find a probably rundown dive or something to live in for now."

Hearing coming up 

Derek Kehoe is the one tenant who refused to leave, and is now waiting for a residential tenancies hearing on March 15. 

"If you walked in my apartment right now, you would never in a million years be able to tell anything ever happened in there. Ever," Kehoe said. 

He said he's standing up for himself, but also the other tenants in the building who didn't know their rights or couldn't fight the eviction.

"We have 11 months left on our lease. We should be able to come back once it's repaired," he said. "But for them to tell us, 'You have five to seven days to get out and never come back,' I think that's completely inappropriate and we're not going to stand for it."