By: Mandana Jafarian
This is a story of how the property renting system works in Canada. It may sound unreal, but I guarantee you it is a true story, every word.
It is about how the law and the COVID-19 pandemic are favoring criminally-minded tenants. It is not about being paid rent. It’s about being scammed by thieves and fraudsters who deliberately take advantage of the loopholes in the Residential Tenancies Act, knowing full well that it will take at least nine months for landlords to be able to evict them. We got lucky to be able to get the eviction order in three months – mind you, it was a fulltime job of constant follow ups with the Police, Fire Department, our lawyers, and our neighbors.
In early March this year we moved to a new house, leaving our home of 7 years in Richmond Hill after months of debate about whether we should sell it, or rent it out. The outburst of COVID-19 had affected the housing market negatively with dropping house sales. In addition, our young children loved the old house and begged us to save it for them. We had heard of the existence of “dangerous tenants” but we decided that we are going to rent it out for a year and then we would decide what to do with our property. My husband and I are both immigrants, having worked hard in the past 20 years. We are grateful for what we are able to leave for our retirement and maybe for our children. We also loved our quiet cul-de-sac and the nice neighbors, so when my husband suggested that we should add a kitchen in the basement and rent the house to two different families I said “No”. I told him I would rather collect less rent than go through the headache of dealing with two different families who may not get along, and who may disturb the neighbors’ peace. The potential rental price would cover the cost of both the mortgage and maintenance, and we decided to rent our 4-bedroom two-story house to one single family. We put our house on the rental market slightly before COVID-19 struck.
On March 25 2020, we received an offer and rental application from a Arif Saied and his family. They agreed to pay the first and last payments and full rent each month. We signed a one-year lease contract. In the rental application he mentioned the names of the five people who would live in the house: himself and his wife, Hafsa Naseer, with their two young children (2 and 5 years old) and his father. When we asked to meet with his family, his real estate agent told us that Saied’s wife and two young children and his old father won’t be able to make it “due to COVID” – which seemed totally reasonable. “Saied” came to meet with us wearing a mask. We did our due diligence, searching for his name on the Internet. Nothing showed up. All his documents were provided via his real estate agent and looked good to us. He even provided us with a T4 in his name (Arif Saied), and a credit check report. The start day on the lease was April 15 2020. On April 14, he sent us an insurance document in his name only. My husband, Kambiz, asked for insurance coverage for everyone who was supposed to live in the house. He provided us with the complete insurance documents within few hours. We handed him the keys. The keys to our beautiful, clean, freshly painted, well maintained house. A perfect house for a young family. We also left some furniture for them. They moved in on April 15th and the nightmare began shortly after.
On April 23rd, just about one week after our tenants had moved in, one of the neighbors called asking us politely, and hesitantly, if we had rented our house as an Airbnb? This neighbor was also a real estate agent. He called because my husband had had a discussion with him a few months before, and had specifically told him that we were not intending to lease the house on a short-term basis. What he told us was shocking: There were at least 6 different cars parked in the driveway, and another 2 on the street. My husband sent our tenant, Arif Saied, a text message and, as suggested by a lawyer, also posted a notice of inspection on the front door of the house on the same day. (Landlords, are legally allowed to enter their property any time on providing the tenant with a 24-hours notice.) Saied replied that his family did not feel comfortable with such visits because of the pandemic. “Let us settle first, we will invite you and your family for dinner.” He replied sarcastically.
Although Airbnb had announced that due to COVID-19 situations, short term leases were not allowed, we began a search of their website to see if he was advertising our house. Then another neighbor informed us that she had seen the ad for our house on Kijiji a few days before. We then searched Kijiji, and what we found was beyond belief. Arif Saied, using the nickname ‘Jay’, had divided our 4-bedrooms house into 14 different units, renting each of them on a monthly basis. The ad said “no background check, no lease agreement, cash only”. He also had used all the furniture that we had left for his family to use, including the master bedroom furniture, a sofa set, some office desks and chairs, and the patio furniture. They had put heavy curtains and wooden panels in the family room, dining room, and in the basement, dividing the areas to be used as separate rental spaces. We also found out that he had more than 10 other properties on his Kijiji profile. This was, and still is, his business! Renting spacious houses, and turning them into rooming houses for his own profit. We began calling lawyers and the police.
Our worst fears had come true. Being familiar with the Landlord Tenant Board (LTB), we called lawyers. Each one gave us different suggestions, but they all said that due to COVID-19 all the LTB courts are closed until further notice. They said we could file a complaint, but it would take months and months to get a hearing considering the piles of other complaints waiting in line.
I called the York Region Police and explained the situation. The officer asked what did we expect the police to do? I explained that having 14 different people in a single dwelling during COVID-19 is a threat to these people’s health, especially that they are using a shared kitchen and shared bathrooms, and also puts the neighborhood at a higher risk of disease spread. The police told me that this was a civil matter, and that we had to go to the LTB. I explained that all the courts are closed, and our “tenant” (Syed) knows what he is doing. In return “Officer A” from Richmond Hill Police department who was on the phone with me, criticized me: “Mam! Did you just become the landlord?” Suggesting that this was our own fault not having checked all the tenant’s documents and not done our due diligence – so we were doomed to suck it up.
My husband contacted a bunch of different lawyers. Some suggested that we should collect our rent and keep our peace and wait until the courts open again. Some suggested that we should first talk to our “tenant” directly, to explain that this is the breach of our contract, which stipulated no subletting. Some suggested that we would first have to prove that he, our “tenant”, did not live in the property. According to the Residential Tenancies Act as long as one of the people signed on the lease contract lives in the property, it is legally acceptable for them to have other “guests” living with them. They do not need to notify the landlord of the number of guests. So, to prove that he is using the premises as a means of doing business was going to be hard – in spite of his ads on Kijiji. Another suggestion was to call the City of Richmond Hill and find out whether the area was designated for Single family dwellings only or if Rooming Houses were permitted as well. I emailed the City and found out that our house was located in the area that Rooming Houses were not permitted. They also said that the homeowner is responsible for ensuring that their property is not used as a rooming house, otherwise they will be fined.
In a text message to my husband, Syed had also mentioned that he is a type of tenant that won’t bother us much, and that we should not be worried about getting our rent. What he was implying was that we should stop bothering him, let him to do his business, and he would pay us rent in return. Here we knew our worst fears had come true: we were dealing with a “tenant” who was deliberately taking advantage of the situation. He knew exactly what he was doing. He had deliberately and knowingly deceived us, and he knew that not only would the law favor him, but that COVID-19 would also delay everything in his favor. So what should we do? We could file a complaint and take him to the court, and in that case, we were sure he was never going to pay us rent. But, we didn’t know how long it would take for us to get a court order to evict him and his illegal sub-tenants!
During the first week, we lined up all the options we had. My husband interviewed a few lawyers and paralegal services, and found Hesami Paralegal Services, a paralegal who was as eager as us to evict people like our “tenant”. Since then, we have been working with him. He has been very proactive, and did not rest until we got the eviction order. But that took us about three months of fulltime work, and four different courts, let alone the cost.
As our paralegal suggested, Kambiz started to file a complaint with the LTB. During the early stage of gathering all the documents, we soon found out that all the documents provided by our “tenant” were fraudulent. Arif Saied’s real name is Arif Adnan Syed. His driver’s license and T4 documents and all the other documents were fraudulent – using his fake name. He and his partner, Hafsa Naseer, had a history of vehicle fraud and had police records. A Google search revealed all the history (reference #1). On April 28th, we completed an online police report for fraud, and York Region Police major fraud department opened a file to investigate the matter. From this point, we got lucky to get in touch with “Officer B”, who has been constantly and keenly following up regarding this case. We also applied for an emergency court hearing with the LTB - and our request was accepted.
On May 7th, sometime within the first two weeks after the tenants moved in, a police officer called me, asking whether I was the landlord of the house. He asked if I was aware of what was going on at the property. Apparently they had just been there to investigate a matter concerning one of the occupants (the officer could not reveal the nature of the issue), and were looking for the owner of the house. The occupants did not know who the landlord was, and gave the police the phone number for ‘Jay’. Jay (Syed) told the police that the landlord was out of country! The police officer did an extra search and found my phone number. Luckily, we had filed a complaint with the police before that date. I gave the officer the file number for our complaint. He also said he was sorry but these issues take time to resolve in the civil court.
Mr. Hesami, our paralegal, then suggested that we should inspect the house – which is the right of any landlord, provided that you give the tenant 24 hours notice. My husband filled in the legal notification form and posted it on the front door of the house, and 24 hours later he and Hesami went to our property. On their arrival, they saw a man changing the front door lock. Kambiz introduced himself as the homeowner, mentioned the notice, and told the guy that changing the lock was illegal without his permission. By this point, Kambiz and Mr. Hesami were both in the hallway. As a few other renters gathered, as Kambiz introduced himself, a huge guy holding a screwdriver first banged the bedroom door violently then rushed downstairs pointing the screwdriver at Kambiz. The other man who was changing the front door lock also had tools in his hands; he pushed Kambiz and Hesami out through the front doorway, while the first guy with the screwdriver started to chase them. As Kambiz and Hesami were running in the street, they called 911 to report they were being assaulted. The guy followed them, into the street, but Police arrived and the huge guy with the screwdriver went back into the house. The other man also attempted to runaway from the police, he ran to his car and started driving away. But there is only one exit from a cul-de-sac, and the police were blocking his escape. Some of the neighbors witnessed these events. He was arrested – his car did not have a legal license plate – and was released after a few hours. The big guy with the screwdriver, who could have been escaped through the backyard, was never found by the police, despite a helicopter search.
On May 22nd, we got our first emergency LTB hearing on the grounds that the tenant had put the health and safety of others in danger. We presented all the evidence. All the neighbors were worried and kept telling us that they lock their windows at night – this is the same neighborhood that people used to leave the garage doors wide open and front doors unlocked. Now everybody felt unsafe. The neighbors told us about all the suspicious activities going on in the house, and that every week they saw a police car in front of the house for another new complaint. The neighbors told us they smelled drugs and some guys smoked outside the house late at night. Different people were moving into and leaving the house every week. My husband dropped by the neighborhood and spoke on the street with some of those who lived in the house, who told him that they were paying rent to Jay on either a monthly or weekly basis. One of the neighbors, who was our witness in court, said she saw the guy holding a sharp object in his hands while chasing Kambiz and Mr. Hesami running in the street. After the incident, Syed threatened Kambiz texting him: “Stop. Your 2-million-dollar worth of house is in my hand”. We presented this, and all other information, to the LTB adjudicator, and explained that our “tenant” had put our safety, and that of both the occupants and the neighbors at risk. Nevertheless the LTB adjudicator judged that pushing a landlord out of his own property, and threatening him both physically and in text messages did not constitute grounds for an emergency safety ruling. Our case was rejected.
There are some extremely absurd rules of law that criminal tenants, such as ours, can exploit to their advantage. For example, Ontario law dictates that the landlord is responsible for any property fire hazards. Our house was designed for a single family, and we meant it to be used by a single family, but our “tenant” had sublet it as a 14-unit rooming house (the number 14 was confirmed in one of the police reports). Nevertheless, we as the landlords are responsible for making the property safe for those living there, although we never intended for them to occupy the premises, and our “tenant” is in flagrant breach of the lease agreement he signed with us. Similarly, landlords are responsible for paying the water bills, and under no circumstances can they shut down the water as long as the property is occupied, as water represents a basic necessity. I have always been proud that Canada has strong laws to protect tenants. However, such laws severely limit landlords’ capacity to deal with situations such as ours, and should be revised in order to prevent tenants with criminal intentions abusing the system.
Nevertheless, the next step we took, was to involve the Fire department. We discovered that the officers in Fire department were all too familiar with similar cases involving Syed and his partner Naseer. They told us that this criminal pair has done the same thing to several other landlords in Richmond Hill, Thornhill, and Markham. It seems very unreasonable, at the very least, that Syed and his partner can continue their nefarious activities with apparent impunity. Anyhow, Syed was not there on the day of the fire inspection. The fire officers saw all the wood panels that were nailed to the ceilings, walls and floors, all the heavy curtains that were used as room dividers. The officers gave us the list of some immediate changes that needed to be done – which we did- and a list of some other changes to make the house suitable to be used as a 14-unit rooming house. The Fire department gave us a two-month deadline to undertake the necessary changes after which, if they were not completed, we would be fined $20,000. A copy of the order was sent to the tenant because, by law, he also shared the responsibility.
On June 17th, we got another emergency hearing with the LTB. All the court sessions during COVID-19 are held by phone. We went to the emergency court this time on the grounds of the fire safety issues, telling the judge that it was not fair for us to be held responsible for the lives of 14 people whom we don’t know and to whom it was never our intention to rent the house. The fire officer also confirmed the high probability of fire in the property due to the unacceptable situation. The judge ordered the tenant to be evicted by June 24 2020, and to pay us $8000 for the damages caused.
On Thursday 25 June, 2020, York Regional Police issued a media release concerning the arrest of Arif Adnan Syed and Hafsa Naseer in connection with an ongoing fraud investigation involving housing rentals. (reference #2,3)
Before we had applied to the second court, Kambiz had contacted some of the other homeowners who had rented their properties to Syed in similar circumstances. In some he had also used fraudulent documents and in almost all cases had stopped paying rent to the owners, while conducting his lucrative rooming-house scam. In one case owners were owed over 6 months rent while it was calculated Syed and his partner were making upwards of $11,000/month in rent from just this one of his dozen-or-so such properties. In this case the owner had succeeded in getting an LTB hearing just before COVID-19, but it was thrown out on a technicality, and had to be withdrawn because a notice had been served to Syed by email rather than the accepted mail or by-hand, and without even a discussion of the merits of the case. The owners are back on the waiting list for an LTB hearing after a renewed application, while the convicted Syed and Naseer continue to gain revenues from “their” properties.
During our second LTB court, when Syed was asked if he himself lived in the house that he had rented from us, under oath he replied “Yes”. Our paralegal then presented him with 8 different rental applications that he had filled up during the past 12 months, some of which were signed after May 15th (the start day of his lease agreement with us). Mr. Hesami asked Syed “Do you live in all of these other addresses as well?” and he replied “No. I rented those for my friends.”
The details of the recording are available via the Landlord Tenant Board.
We took Syed to the court for the third time. Why? Because although we won the case in the second court, the LTB court order cannot be forced against the tenant unless he moves out voluntarily. In this case, Syed told us he would move out in mid July (instead of June 14th). This was because he was well aware that he could buy time for himself and appeal the court order. Also, under no circumstances could we force him to move out. So, we had two choices: 1) To take him to the Superior Court of Justice, because then they could order a sheriff to evict the tenant, or 2) To take him to another LTB court and convince the judge that because Syed is using the property to make a profitable business, the Residential Tenancies Act doesn’t apply and this should be considered a commercial matter. In that case, we could kick him out under commercial law. What did we end up doing? My husband, being the persevering person that he is, applied for both.
We hired a lawyer for the Superior Court, and requested an emergency hearing again. We got lucky the court accepted our case as an emergency because of the fire hazards, ordered the eviction and allowed us to bring sheriffs to evict the occupants of the property in spite of the COVID-19.
On July 14th 2020, we took our house back after three months of nightmare; nevertheless we are considered the lucky ones. There are still at least 10 other homeowners who don’t know when they can get their properties back from Syed and Naseer.
Our beautiful house was trashed: broken kitchen cabinets, big holes in the walls, giant nails in the ceilings, eggs thrown at the walls, ugly scratches on the hardwood floors, carpets soaked in ketchup and beer, and the master bedroom walk-in closet was used as a bird house. No need to mention all the junk all over the house and damage to the garage door caused by their moving truck! (ref #6)
The tenants had moved out - but had also taken all the furniture we had left for them, plus stole the refrigerator and the microwave in the main kitchen. They tried to steal the gas stove as well, but were not successful in disconnecting it. They did not take the washer and dryer just because they had already damaged it so it was out of order. Of course they left it for us with all the other junks and piles of garbage they left behind. The police were present and were given a list of all the missing items (more than $6000 in value) and we have, yet again, to go to another court to claim for the damages to our house, on top of a $1000 bill for their water usage that they did not pay. Not just that; we have to prove who stole these items since according to the police, several people lived in the house and it is not easy to lay charges against one person – although we had rented the house to Hafsa Naseer and Arif Adnan Syed (AKA Arif Saied).
Lesson learned: There is a loophole in the system and criminally-minded tenants are well aware of it. While all the three organizations involved, the City, the Police, and the Fire department, were aware that this is a fraud case and that these specific “tenants” have been abusing their tenancy agreements and breaching their contracts, violating the City bylaw and Fire codes, none of these organizations had a way to support the victims (the landlords). In fact, since the system holds the landlords responsible to comply with the codes of the law, leaves such tenants an open opportunity to take advantage of the situation. On top of all this unfortunately, the COVID-19 pandemic, the court closures, and the No Eviction policy have again played into the hands of such criminal and vicious tenants.
When all is considered, even a Landlord Tenant Board court order lacks the enforcement power to evict the tenants if they do not comply with the court order to vacate the premises. While we could get the emergency hearing and a court order for eviction, we still needed to take the matter to the Superior Court of Justice to be able to get our property back. This means extra cost to the landlord and extra time for a bullying and criminal tenant to exploit the system to their benefit.
This broken system is eventually hurting tenants in general. Some landlords ask for a whole year rental payment upfront to protect themselves and prevent such things to happen to them. What could be done to prevent this type of flagrant abuse of the system?
News Links:
1. TheStar 2010/05/20: Police shut down moving company, arrest owners
2. CityNews 2020/06/25: Two arrested in fraud case linked to luxury house rentals
3. NewmarketToday 2020/06/25: 2 arrested in Markham, Richmond Hill rental fraud investigation
4. https://toronto.citynews.ca/video/2020/06/25/man-facing-fraud-charges-after-allegedly-turning-rental-home-into-rooming-house/
5. Hesami Paraegal Services
Some Pictures:
6. Pictures after Eviction
7. Tenant turned the house into 14 units rooming house
8. Our house before rent
Updated Aug. 20, 2020:
9. CBC NEWS: GTA landlords struggle to evict man from 11 luxury homes he's rented out as rooming houses
10. Man charged with attempted murder of York Police officer lived in illegally subleased Markham home
