…And Justice For All (or the Story of How Carrie and Ryan made $150)

Verdict: Tenant in the right, Landlord in the wrong.

Result: $120 to replace groceries, $30 for beer.

What the heck am I talking about?

In short, a week after I moved out of Beverley House, the landlord phoned Carrie to see if it’s alright to come and clean up the kitchen. No problem!

Problem is that Carrie came home to find all the contents of the cupboards in a box, as well as all food from the fridge thrown into garbage bags. We’re talking condiments, frozen food (gone bad by this point of course), recently cooked stuff, juice, you name it, it was there.

So of course retaliation is in order but it turns out that the landlord doesn’t think he did anything wrong since he had to make the place presentable for potential tenants. I suppose he forgot that we are doing him a favour by letting him into the place before we move out, and…oh yes, the most important thing: Carrie is still living there, hence she needs food to survive.

Anyhow, the landlord didn’t budge so we went to the Housing Tribunal this morning where we got some free legal advice from an Ottawa U student (awesome! Thanks Mark!) as well as went to a mediator instead of having to go in front of the court. The landlord wouldn’t budge while talking with the mediator, but after she spoke to him alone, we came back in and he offered to pay $150 which we gladly accepted.

Lesson #1 Learned: Did you know that legal advice is free in a lot of places? Bring it to the University’s if you need to! They handle tenant cases a lot of the time.

In the end, justice prevailed. We are happy with the result, although are still baffled as to how someone could manage to believe they have the right to do something like that to us. All along, we were just trying to be nice and let them work on the house before we left.

Lesson #2 Learned: When it comes to landlords and tenants, sometimes it doesn’t pay to be nice.