Landlord pays for hotel stay

[attach]7576[/attach]Tenants of a North Toronto apartment building that has been without heat or hot water since Feb. 11 have been moved to a nearby hotel on Mt. Pleasant Rd. until their building’s heat is restored.

At a Thursday, March 6 Landlord and Tenant Board hearing, adjudicator Joseph Berkovits ordered landlord Bianca Pollak to pay for the 15 tenants’ accommodations after she was unable to show she had complied with a previous order to repair or replace the boiler in the building at 2779 Yonge St.

Before the hearing ended, Pollak provided evidence she had paid for her tenants’ accommodations, at a cost of about $125 a night for each unit, until March 12. She promised to stand to an extension of their stay if heat and hot water haven’t been restored in their homes by then.

“I am doing everything I can,” a visibly frustrated Pollak told the hearing, noting that repairs might take as long as three weeks.

In her testimony, Pollak said she repeatedly called nine companies seeking a replacement boiler after “several contractors” had failed to repair the existing equipment. She said she was told no boiler units were available for rent in Toronto and that one company told her it take two weeks for a rental unit to be delivered from Hamilton. She was also told a new unit could be installed by March 24, she said.

At one point Lisa Feinberg, legal counsel for the impacted tenants, asked Pollak if she had offered to pay any of the contractors extra to move the tenants to the front of its queue. Pollak replied that she had not.

Late in the hearing Pollak took a call from a contractor later identified as David Eastwood, owner of Arrow Heating and Air Conditioning Ltd. After promising additional payments to the contractor, Pollak told the hearing repairs can start on Tuesday, March 11 and will likely take a week to complete.

Tenant Andrew Gallagher testified that the same contractor had told him a new boiler system could be delivered within three days once payment was received.

A third hearing has been scheduled for Friday, March 14 so the board can ascertain that the tenants have been properly provided with accommodations. Berkovits said he would “consider” a fine should the heating issue not be rectified by that time.

The fine could not exceed $25,000 and probably wouldn’t be as expensive as the cost of tenants’ hotel rooms, Berkovits said.

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