Residents of a motel in Bedford, NS, say they have been forced to leave their rooms in what a Dalhousie legal aid lawyer calls “mass recovery”.
More than 20 people currently live at the Bluenose Inn & Suites, but on March 1, they were notified that they had to leave the property by May 1.
“People are leaving, my family is leaving,” said Brandi McGuire, an NSCC IT student who has lived at the inn since July 2020 with her four children.
“The others are still struggling to find something and struggling to stay here until they find something, but at the same time they don’t know how much battle they have left.”
Mark Culligan, a community lawyer at Dalhousie Legal Aid Service, said Bluenose owners – like many other hotel and motel owners – began renting out people on a monthly basis during the pandemic and effectively became landlords. of the inhabitants.
He said this makes hotel guests tenants who have legal rights and protections under the Housing Rental Act.
The Landlord Notice was served on approximately 40 tenants on March 1, 2022 (Mark Culligan)
“[The owners] sent everyone a notice to leave the building on March 1 for the purpose of demolishing the building, but that was actually prohibited by the eviction ban, “Culligan said.” And so these legal communications have no legal effect … so it’s a very worrying landlord trying to circumvent the rules on eviction. “
Last March, the ban on renovations – the act of evicting tenants to renovate a building and then increasing the rent – was lifted when the state of emergency in the province ended. However, new protections for tenants have been added Housing Rental Act.
Protections include that the tenant must receive at least three months ‘notice, and the landlord must give the tenant between one and three months’ rent as compensation, depending on the size of the building. Additional compensation may be awarded to the tenant if the landlord does not comply with the new rules or is found to have acted in bad faith.
The building is no longer “suitable” for people to live
John Gonn, director of the Bluenose Inn & Suites, said they had made the difficult decision to close the inn because the aging building was no longer “fit” for living.
“There is no renewal here. There is no form of request or notice of release, “Gon said.
“It’s a development site, but there are no immediate redevelopment plans.”
People living at the Bluenose Inn pay $ 1,400 a month for a room with kitchenette and bathroom and $ 1,000 for a single room.
The Bluenose Inn and Suites website advertises these 30-day special rates. (Blueose Inn & Suites website)
Some confusion about the new rules: Minister
Colton LeBlanc, the minister responsible for the Housing Rental Act, said he thought there was some confusion about the new rules governing renovations. He said the province is doing some “targeted marketing” on social media platforms to better inform landlords and tenants.
LeBlanc said the housing council had received 28 applications from tenants who were allegedly punished.
Asked if some landlords claimed the need for major repairs as an excuse to evict people, LeBlanc did not answer the question directly.
“I recognize that there are cases where significant – and I emphasize significant – repairs are needed to maintain a safe structure, a safe roof over someone’s head,” he said.
Bluenose is not an isolated incident
Culligan said he and his colleagues wrote to the landlord informing them of their legal obligations, but there was no answer.
He said there have been a number of recent incidents involving landlords trying to circumvent the rules, and his priority is to ensure that this landlord is accountable to the law and tenants.
“There have been many incidents in the last few months with landlords taking matters into their own hands,” Culligan said. “So the demolition of a building when people don’t live there, or the disruption of services. That’s why we want to shed light on this situation so that the landlord doesn’t think it’s a good thing to do it here. “
Culligan said he had heard numerous reports that the Internet at Bluenose had been cut off in the past month and that requests for repairs and maintenance were being ignored.
McGuire said her children shared the beds and the shower in her room had been broken for a year.
“I mentioned it in the office, they weren’t interested in the repair. We have rats, we have mice. We don’t even have a door in our bedroom.”
McGuire said she was able to find a place in Sackville, but it was more expensive and she was disappointed that she would have to uproot her children.
“Nothing was done right here. “We were not notified properly,” she said. “This is not respect for our rights. He does not see us as human beings because we are one step ahead of homelessness.”
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