1850 Bloor Resident 0

Residents of 1850 and 1840 Bloor Street - Capital Repairs and Rent Increase

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Hello Residents of 1840 and 1850 Bloor Street, Mississauga ON,

This is in reference to the Landlord and Tentant Board file number CEL-71486-17.

Did you know that you are currently paying rent above guidelines even though the legal process for that increase has not been completed and is being challenged ? ?

The reason for that is that the landlord (rep by Ranee Management) has completed repairs that qualify them to request this increase. It is important to note however, that the landlord and tenant board has yet to approve this increase even though you are currently paying for it.

We are a group of tenants that are trying to help out. We want to ensure that the repairs were required and that the costs are correctly represented. However, to do that we require your consent on forms related to this matter.

If you would like us to fight against this increase for you, please sign this petition. By signing the petition you are providing this consent in writing and it will help us help you ensure that you are not paying for what you shouldn't be.

Thank you,

Fellow residents of 1840 and 1850 Bloor Street

tenants1840.1850bloormiss@gmail.com


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January 31, 2019 update:


Hello, despite the lack of regular updates, we've been hard at work collecting information and preparing our defense.


If you are attending the hearing please vote for Maria Constantin-Evenson to represent 1850 Bloor Street and Joanna Gadzinski to represent 1840 Bloor Street.


They will also have a copy of the document we will be submitting at the hearing. It was prepared by our group with the help on a Professional Engineer that does Restoration work and resides in the building. He was not able to make it to the hearing.


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January 31, 2019 Update 2 - Post Hearing:

Dear Fellow Tenants,


On January 31st, the scheduled Merit Hearing in regards to the AGI, file CEL-71486-17 was spent.


Let me start off with thanking everyone that put in effort from handing out informative flyers to putting in countless hours in research, callings, meetings, drafting strategy, document editing, understanding and explaining everything to the rest of us and finallypresenting it in such a successful manner at the LTB hearing. Many thanks to Mazen, Maria, Joanna, Mario, Dragos, Gianina, Ivana, Lucian and many others. Special greeting to Nevio who helped us
to prove the best of ourselves.

Our strategy at the Hearing was counting two possible scenarios at hands: a) requesting Adjournment and b) proceed with the Hearing ifthe Adjournment denied, in this case addressing two core aspects suchas errors and omissions in the AGI and eligibility of the capital expenditures and their eligible amounts.


To recapitulate what occurred at the Hearing:

- Tenants’ representation was covered by Maria, Joanna and Mario (the latter, a great team addition at hands)
- The Tenants asked the LTB to adjourn the Hearing as Renee had not given us all the necessary documentation to proceed with the Hearing.
- This request was disregarded by the Adjudicator claiming the information the Tenants requested will not have a impact on the outcome of this AGI.
- The Landlord offered to settle once more - the offer was denied.
- The Landlord claimed that tenants had complained prior to work about the exterior balcony rails and were concerned for their safety (though no proof of that was provided)
- The landlord presented their case, with an "expert" witness; which was the contractor responsible to do the work for both buildings.


Moving forward to the first item on the agenda at Hearing:


-The Tenants requested the application be resubmitted as two applications as the builds are two separate entities, with different postal codes, amenities, and cost work. The response we received from LTB indicated that they viewed this application more like a complex;
instead of two different buildings.
- The balconies came into question and the Landlord brought up the contractor as an expert witness and asked them to tell the LTB why the balconies needed to be replaced.
- Tenants now had the chance to cross-examine the witness; where technical questions were asked and the witness failed to satisfy us with the answer.
- Tenants indicated and demonstrated that spending balcony related such as prior repairs on first floor both buildings, accounting slab work mainly related to railings installment, ceiling painting and tint glass are cosmetic in nature therefore they must be subtracted from the total balcony cost. Revision of useful life according to RTA was pointed as well. The Adjudicator took notes but gave no indication as to what the outcome will be after.
- After going through multiple examples of calculations that show how wrong input alters the math behind the % rent increase above guidelines claimed by the landlord, procedures and pointing out that the landlord failed to carry the burden of proof that is required to justify why this project is a capital expenditure as well as "necessary"; the landlord dropped the other 6 items on the AGI application.


This Hearing concluded with the Tenants arguing the costs are to be fully dismissed as the landlord did not prove this was a "necessary" expense.


It is up to the Adjudicator to provide us with the new percentage of increase after amending the AGI. However, we know it will be drastically less as 6 out of 7 items have been removed completely. It was indicated to us, by the LTB that we will all receive in a month mail directly from them, informing us of the final decision from LTBand this landlord's AGI application.

Regardless the result, we believe a lot was achieved and this effort does not go unnoticed. This experience was hugely instructive in preparing us for the next AGIs. Stay alert from now on for any future work or issue to happen in our buildings and document everything. It might save your pocket one day.

Again, a big big big thank you to everyone that came out.


Your Tireless Group of Tenants

A copy of the document submitted document can be found here:

https://www.dropbox.com/s/vqni0ctk7qt0cbk/MH%20File%20CEL-71486-17.pdf?dl=0

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