Landlord frustrated over delay at rentalsman’s office

It has been about two weeks since the Office of Residential Tenancies began taking non-urgent eviction applications again, but some landlords are calling the process since then “ridiculous.”

Wendy Sekulich said she has been having trouble with a renter in Saskatoon for quite a while, but she said she reached her limit during the pandemic.

At the end of July, Sekulich said she served the tenant with a notice that she was applying for eviction. On the first day she could, Aug. 4, Sekulich turned in her application — but that wasn’t the end of things.

She said the application was bounced back to her several times through email for what she called “technicalities,” including missing a form and the fact she served the tenant before Aug. 4.

She said there were between eight- and 36-hour delays between each time she submitted forms and got a response, dragging out the process.

Sekulich said she’d try to call the office and get someone on the phone but she’d leave a message and wouldn’t get a response or would wait 3 1/2 hours on hold without being able to talk to someone.

She said after the last application last week she didn’t hear anything for days, so she finally contacted her MLA who gave her the information for the Minister of Justice’s office.

Just a few hours after a subsequent email to the minister, someone from the rentalsman called her back to let her know her application had been accepted.

“I said, ‘Well, why didn’t anybody tell me?’ (They replied) ‘Well, we don’t have time to phone everybody individually,’ ” said Sekulich.

Sekulich said all this frustration over the past two weeks could have been avoided if someone had been available to talk to.

“Had they responded on Aug. 4 with a simple phone call saying this is what needs to be done, I would have said, ‘OK, I’m going to go through it with you. What do I need to do right?’ ” she said.

Any other time Sekulich has had to file something with the office, she said she has visited in person and had officials go over it and let her know whether it was done properly, but this time the office was closed for COVID-19 restrictions.

She believes if the province is willing to send teachers back to the classroom, they can send workers back into the Office of Residential Tenancies, with precautions.

Sekulich is frustrated and feels she’s not getting the support she needs from the office to go through this process, which is unfamiliar to her. She said she only has the one unit and has never before had a renter who has refused to leave.

“When they’re not responding to you for up to 36 hours or more, and you have to go to the Minister of Justice to get a response, something’s wrong with that picture,” said Sekulich.

The province put a moratorium on renters being evicted from their homes at the start of the pandemic restrictions to stop people who lost their income being kicked out onto the street.

Sekulich agrees with the moratorium but thinks it should have been done in a better way.

Sekulich does now have a date for a hearing, but said as she waits there’s a person refusing to leave the unit and a different renter waiting to move in — and she’s still paying the mortgage and taxes on the unit.

“We’re worried about what are we going to see when we do finally get our property back,” said Sekulich.

The Office of Residential Tenancies declined to provide someone to comment on this story but did send some information.

It acknowledged the office is experiencing higher-than-normal call volumes, but said there is no backlog of applications.

In the first week that non-urgent applications were being accepted, the office accepted 68 eviction applications, all of which have now been scheduled for hearings. The majority of those applications were for non-payment of rent during the moratorium.

Sixty-eight applications in one week is about on par with how many applications were accepted in August of 2019.

The office couldn’t say whether a larger number of applications had been rejected than normal as it doesn’t keep track of rejected applications. It said that applications can be rejected if they’re not filled in correctly or are missing the required documentation to proceed to a hearing.