A dispute resolution ruling from the B.C. Residential Tenancy Branch highlights – at least for me – how vulnerable tenants are to landlords and the system itself.
In the ruling document, a Burnaby landlord was looking for a monetary award for clean-up costs and unpaid rent, and permission to keep the damage deposit, while the tenant was looking to get her damage deposit returned.
The tenant moved out abruptly and without notice, but had a pretty good reason – the place was infested with bedbugs and she didn’t think the landlord was moving quickly enough.
“She had moved out of the rental unit because she claimed it was uninhabitable due to a bedbug infestation,” the ruling said.
The landlord was also looking for money to cover the cost of removing furniture and belongings “abandoned” by the tenant.
“The tenant testified that she discovered bed bugs in her apartment … and found that there was a nest of bedbugs near where she slept,” the ruling said. “The tenant testified that she had to discard her bed and most of the clothes and furniture because they were infested with bedbugs … she testified that she later discovered that some of the occupants of surrounding apartments in the building reported to her that they also had bedbugs … the tenant said that the landlord was verbally abusive to her and did not take the problem seriously.”
The landlord did, eventually, send an exterminator to spray, but the tenant said that the carpets were not treated, nor were many pieces of furniture and so bedbugs remained after she came back from the exterminator’s work.
The tenant said the treatment was not enough, but that was all the landlord was prepared to do. The tenant then moved out without notice and left behind items still infested with bedbugs, the hearing heard.
The RTB adjudicator, however, took the side of the landlord, saying that even though the exterminator wasn’t booked immediately, at least someone was eventually brought in. The ruling says that the tenant should still have given notice, and in writing, if they felt there was a breach in the agreement.
“I do not find that the presence of bedbugs constituted grounds for the tenant to move out without giving notice,” the ruling said.
That last part is a bit of a howler. Would you spend another moment in a place that was filled with bedbugs if you felt that the spray treatment hadn’t worked?
I wouldn’t. I think the RTB could have been a little more lenient and perhaps split the difference. Instead, the tenant got dinged for everything except the cleaning fee – and only because the landlord didn’t supply enough documentation.
Follow Chris Campbell on Twitter @shinebox44.
