One year later, still no residential tenancies enforcement unit in N.S.
Michaela Rutley has two legal decisions that say her former landlords must pay her more than $1,500 — but she doesn’t know if she will ever see that money.
More than a year and a half after realizing her landlords charged her an illegal deposit and kept it when she moved out, Rutley has been through Nova Scotia’s residential tenancies program and small claims court, but is struggling to enforce the rulings.
She has turned to local bylaw officers, sheriffs and police with no luck yet.
“It kind of just puts me in a loop with nowhere to go,” she said in a recent interview.
Rutley is one of many tenants and landlords who go through the official channels to adjudicate rental disputes, then find themselves left with no resolution after months of effort.
For years, advocates for both landlords and tenants have been pushing for a dedicated unit to enforce residential tenancy orders or levy fines, saying the current process has no teeth.
A year ago, a consultant’s report commissioned by the provincial government recommended this very thing — but so far no progress has been made on this front.
Report never released
In November 2022, the Houston government began to look into the issue, hiring Halifax-based Davis Pier Consulting to study Ontario’s enforcement system. The consultants were tasked to come up with a comprehensive program design detailing the scope, structure and costs of implementing something similar in Nova Scotia.
Last May, Colton LeBlanc, the minister responsible for the Residential Tenancies Act, confirmed to CBC News that his department had received the report. His department refused to release it publicly or discuss its contents.
In August, CBC obtained documents that showed the report recommended the creation of a residential tenancy compliance and enforcement unit similar to Ontario’s, and that the unit should be in place by March 2024.
Last fall, LeBlanc said an enforcement unit is “on the radar” of his department, but it would not be meeting the timeline set out in the report.
Not a ‘silver bullet’, says minister
LeBlanc declined an interview request. He was asked about progress on an enforcement unit in the legislature in February, but did not expressly say whether his department was going to follow the recommendations in the report.
“The silver bullet here for the residential tenancies program is not a compliance and enforcement unit,” LeBlanc said. “The challenges we’re experiencing today are not going to all be solved by a compliance and enforcement unit.”
LeBlanc also said tenants and landlords may not understand how an enforcement unit would actually work.
In an email, a Department of Service Nova Scotia spokesperson said the consultant’s report won’t be released yet, and the government is still assessing how a residential tenancies compliance and enforcement unit might look in Nova Scotia.
How does the current system work?
According to the Nova Scotia government, when a landlord or a tenant has an issue with the other party that they’re unable to resolve, they can apply to the director of the residential tenancies program for mediation or a hearing.
If mediation doesn’t work, the two parties can move to a hearing with a residential tenancy officer. Within 14 days, the officer will provide a decision. The other party has 10 days to appeal. If they do not, the order can then be enforced through small claims court.
Rutley’s landlords did appeal the decision, but she won in small claims court as well. This means she can technically hire a sheriff to enforce the decision, but it hasn’t worked since she doesn’t have enough information about her former landlords.
“The people I’m dealing with, they keep switching around their banking and they will not reveal their personal address, so there’s no way for me to actually get the sheriff to help me out,” she said.
Mark Culligan, a community legal worker with Dalhousie Legal Aid Service in Halifax, said an enforcement unit wouldn’t bypass the legal system, but it could help.
“I think we would benefit from having one particularly for early dispute resolution, but we also need to give the residential tenancies program more teeth,” Culligan said.
Ursula Prossegger, owner of Urchin Property Management, manages more than 1,000 rental units in Halifax Regional Municipality for about 12 landlords.
She said she tries to resolve any issues with tenants informally, but she does have to go through multiple residential tenancies hearings per year, the majority of them related to rental arrears. She’s spent years on certain cases, but almost never sees the money.
She said she keeps trying to go through the system out of principle, but she feels it sets people up to fail.
“It fails the tenants, it fails the landlords,” Prossegger said. “I would almost go as far as saying it protects the bad apples in the industry.”
Kevin Russell, executive director of the Investment Property Owners Association of Nova Scotia, said he’s urging the provincial government to take action on an issue they’ve known about for years.
“This is just not sustainable,” Russell said. “We need a compliance and enforcement program. And the longer the government fails to act, the worse the crisis is going to get.”
It’s been a year since a consultant recommended Nova Scotia create an enforcement and compliance unit to regulate rental disputes. But so far there is no public progress on this, and tenants and landlords say the current system is broken.
