Should criminals be evicted from apartment buildings?

Ontario provincial Housing Minister Jim Watson says that the government hands are tied when it comes to evicting criminals from social housing. He said that public housing tenants who fire guns, deal drugs or assault neighbours on public housing property, can’t be evicted from Toronto's public housing projects. He added. "Whether it's a serious crime involving a gun or a white collar crime, we don't have the luxury of simply telling that individual that they are not eligible for social housing. That's the reality that we have to deal with."

However, Watson's comments fly in the face of Toronto Community Housing Corporation's ( TCHC ) policy to evict tenants involved in criminal activity, a policy intended to keep the city's violence- plagued social housing communities safe. They come in the wake of recent, high-profile shootings in this city's housing projects.

The reason why the minister’s hands are tied is because the some of the adjudicators of the Landlord and Tenant tribunals are refusing to order the criminals to be evicted. Both the agency and officials with the city's community housing corporation privately insist the Landlord and Tenant Board's adjudicators are treating social housing as a dumping ground for problem tenants.

The minister rejected suggestions there is a revolving door for bad tenants, saying those who are evicted are put to the back of the social housing line ---- a line that currently stands at close to 66,000. He added that Human Rights legislation and other relevant laws mean serious crimes do not equate to automatic eviction, also conceding the system is "never perfect."

A spokesman said that while the TCHC moves quickly to evict tenants involved in illegal activities, it also respects the need for due process, which the Landlord and Tenant Board provides.

People who legitimately ought to be evicted are being allowed to stay in public housing. The end result is that we have situations where the legislation makes it difficult for people to evict on the basis of criminal activity.

The Ontario Tenant Protection Act states in section 61. (1) A landlord may give a tenant notice of termination of the tenancy if the tenant or another occupant of the rental unit commits an illegal act or carries on an illegal trade, business or occupation or permits a person to do so in the rental unit or the residential complex.

What this section implies is that even if the tenant is a mother whose husband has deserted her and she is caring for four underage children and a 16-year-old son who is selling drugs out of her apartment, she and all of her children can be evicted.

This would be unfair to the woman under these circumstances but it would be proper for the Landlord and Tenant Tribunal to order her to evict her own son under penalty that if she doesn’t do it, she and all her children will be evicted.

The trouble is that the Tribunals don’t always give such orders. This not only creates problems for the landlords but it also creates problems for other tenants. Imagine if you will, living next door to a 16-year-old drug pusher who is selling drugs to your own kids as soon as they enter the hallway after leaving your apartment to go out and play. Imagine how frustrated you will be when you complain to the management of the building and you are told that because the Tribunal won’t order the eviction of the drug pusher, there is nothing that the management can do for you.

You can call the police of course if you actually see the thug selling drugs to your kids but this means that you will have to testify against him. Suppose you agree to testify against him but because he was forced to wait so long for his trial, his trial was stayed on the basis that his Charter rights were infringed. Now you have a drug pushing thug who has other thugs as friends living next door to you who knows where your car is parked underground.

Now I will admit that just because a tenant or a family member of a tenant is charged with a criminal offence, this shouldn’t automatically give a landlord carte blanch right to bring in an application to the Tribunal for eviction. It is conceivable that the person charged is in fact innocent and if that is so, such an eviction would be premature and unfair.

However, there can be circumstances in which a landlord can presume the guilt of the tenant or other person living in the premises such as that person firing a gun in the apartment he or she lives in. Under those circumstances, an application should be made immediately. However there is probably a better way to achieve that end. A requests to the court via the assistant crown attorney asking the judge to order that as a condition of bail, the accused stay away from the building may do the trick.

There has to be legislation in place that mandates that if an adjudicator is satisfied that someone in an apartment building has created a criminal act of violence or a criminal act that is of a sexual nature, the adjudicator has no other choice but to order that that person be evicted if over the age of 15. If the thug is under 15 and continues to act in a criminal manner, then the young thug should be placed elsewhere or alternatively, the family should be forced to move out.

I recognize the importance of protecting human rights of others but the rights of individuals in situations that I have just described have to give way to the rights of innocent people who simply want to live in a safe, crime-free environment.

For example, to permit a man who is arrested and charged with being a child molester the right to remain in the same building the children he has molested are living in is so gross, it begs the question, would the adjudicator be happy if he and his young family was living on the same floor the child molester continues to lives on? I don’t need to answer that question since the answer is so obvious. I suppose it is obvious to me and my readers but in reality, it may not be so obvious to some of the adjudicators who live in safe environments miles away from such apartment buildings.