The Ben Mulroney Show - Congestion and shaming in Toronto / Evicted over a penny? A penny.

Episode Date: November 14, 2025

GUESTS: Chiara Padovani (Co Chair of the York South Weston Tenant Union) and tenants Olliver Henry  and Carl Henry If you enjoyed the podcast, tell a friend! For more of the Ben Mulroney Show, subscribe to the podcast! ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://link.chtbl.com/bms⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Also, on youtube -- ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://www.youtube.com/@BenMulroneyShow⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Follow Ben on Twitter/X at https://x.com/BenMulroney Insta: ⁠⁠⁠@benmulroneyshow⁠⁠⁠ Twitter: ⁠⁠⁠@benmulroneyshow⁠⁠⁠ TikTok: ⁠⁠⁠@benmulroneyshow⁠⁠⁠ Executive Producer:  Mike Drolet Reach out to Mike with story ideas or tips at [e-mail] Enjoy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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Share the wonder of Christmas with friends and family at Roy Thompson Hall. Tickets are on sale now at Salvationist.ca slash Christmas. to the Ben Mulroney show. Thank you so much for joining us. We made it to the weekend, guys. This is great. I hope everybody had a great week. You got your hand up, intrepid producer, Mike Drillet, as if I'm doing something wrong. He's got his finger up pointing at me as if, uh, uh, Ben, Ben, tread carefully. I hadn't had one microphone turned on. Some people identify, uh, don't identify that Friday is the end of the week. Some people, it's like the people who think Sunday is the first day of the week. That drives me crazy. I don't understand that. I get the calendar,

starts on a Sunday. First day of the week is, is, is Monday. Can we, can we, no, Dave? No, it's Sunday. Sunday is the beginning of a new week. No. Yes. It's part of a week end. Why does it look like that on the calendar? Okay, yeah, but just exactly. Go to what Drolet just said. Dave Spargal is clearly just being a contrarian because I just sleep, but wrong last night, Dave. Did you fall on your bike ride over? I was debating biking in today, but I didn't. So it's part, he's right. Sunday is the final day of the week, what, weekend? Yeah. When you think, you work, you work Monday to Friday, your weekend.

That's a work week. It's Saturday, Sunday. But it's literally, it's in the name, weekend. Okay. Okay, so if it's part of the weekend, then what comes after the end, the beginning? I consider, I consider when I wake up Sunday, my weekend is over. And I, okay, so that's different. You really do.

That is different. Yes, I, well, I used to feel that way. I used to, loathe, Loth Sunday. because it meant that the next day I have to go back to work. But, you know, can I just tell you, I very much like work now. Like, I really do. I like work. And I enjoy the people I work with.

And so I can confirm when you walk in in the morning, cheery, super sunshiny. So what it means to me is I genuinely, so I get to enjoy my whole weekend because I know I'm going to enjoy my Monday. There you go. Right. So there we go. Anyway, lots to get to today. Well, but here, I wanted to talk to you because we mentioned a few weeks ago that the city of Toronto was in an effort to get. to get traffic moving,

they were going to start putting traffic cops at high volume, high traffic areas in the city. And a couple of days ago, I was in a cab. I took a cab. By the way, the cab experienced far better today

than it was prior to Uber. I ordered a Beck taxi, not being paid by Beck, I ordered a Beck taxi, showed up at my house in seven minutes. They even said, they said, it'll be there in seven minutes

and seven minutes later. He was waiting outside. Lovely driver, had a great conversation with him. And we go all the way downtown. We've got to get to the Royal York. So we're going south on bay, and we get to the intersection of bay and front. And so you can, so right, right, you're getting really close to, you know, all the pedestrian traffic that's coming out of Union Station that's leaving those big office buildings.

And we are at that intersection going south, trying to take a right onto front. And pedestrians everywhere. And I thought to myself in that moment, this is going to be interesting because is the police officer who's essentially there to keep. traffic moving, but maybe also there to educate people about what their rules and responsibilities are. Is this cop going to stop people from entering the intersection when the hand starts flashing? Because everybody thinks that they can run across the intersection until it goes red. That's absolutely false.

Once, if there's a car that wants to take a right, once that hand starts flashing, if you're not in the intersection, you no longer have the right of way. And what I witnessed was a cop who didn't know. He knew what he thought was the rules because he was not letting cars get through. He was watching and letting people run through the intersection until the very end. And then what happens? Once that ends, well then people who are going east-west can go across the intersection. So me in my cab, and every car that wanted to take a right or go straight, had to wait not just for the people who didn't know the rules going north-south,

but for the people who now had the right of way going east-west. This is not a recipe to get traffic moving. And further to that, it's reinforcing bad behavior in pedestrians. And I'm not mad at them because they don't know the rules. And that guy who should have been telling them what the rules were wasn't helping matters. The city needs to get their act together on this and recognize that unless everybody who is on the road knows the rules of the road, we are going to have chaos like we have right now. What are the chances of them getting to know

that everyone on the road to know the rules of the road? You think you should? The cop is there. People are paying attention to him. If he says stop, how many times have you been at an intersection and the cop, there's a guy in the center of the street and he tells you you can go even if it's a red light. They're there to manage flow.

Whether or not the lights are telling you to do it, You're going to listen to him. And if he starts telling him to stop when that hand starts flashing, he might, I mean, you could empower them to say, you no longer have the right of way. You could start populating the people's minds with that idea. And you do it enough times. Muscle memory is going to dictate that you're going to start remembering that when you see the flashing hand, you no longer have the right of way.

It is now the exclusive domain of the car. you're already on there by walking through the street it's already you're a guest you're already a guest there across the street you're a guest on the road let them know that as a certain point you no longer have the right of way

and he wasn't doing that it doesn't surprise me they're going to start handling tickets for jaywalking it's just no I'm not suggesting you hand out tickets I'm suggesting we have to go through a learning phase an education phase People need to know what they're... Look, before I get...

I think people do know. They just don't know. They don't know. Well, some of them know, and they don't care. But if a cop is there, can we just ask him, just push back a little bit against that assumption that as a pedestrian, I have an unfettered right to forward progress forever. Forever.

Once I start walking, I ain't never stopping. Well, there is that chasm between people who are walking and possibly don't own cars. with people who own cars that will never get fixed. You will never fill in that castle. Listen, I could make the argument that what I'm pushing for here

is to get cars moving faster instead of idling, stupidly, pushing CO2 emissions into the air. There's a green argument for what I think. I don't disagree with you. I'm just saying you're never going to educate people to be able to do that. You're never going to do it.

Maybe I should just run for mayor. Oh, hello. I'm not. I'm just trolling. I'm just trolling. Let me see. It came 9-11-11 on November 14th. Is when Ben threw his hat in the ring.

Not happening. Not happening. But anyway, so I look, we need a balance. And I want to share the road. But I want to share the road with people who know what their rules and what the rules are and what their rights and responsibilities are. I won't break the rules on my end if you don't break the rules on yours. And I think there will be, I mean, that's how you get things moving. Yeah.

Right? And also, if everybody plays. by the rules, that's also a way to highlight where problems are. If everyone plays by the rules, like today, I was driving down and there was a very comprehensive bike lane network to the point that

the cyclists actually had their own light, their own light. And when my light turned green, all the other car the car stopped, three cyclists went right through it. As I was in the intersection, went right through it. Like you have your own lane. We're treating you like a motor vehicle and you just

blew through that light. Like, I'm sorry. I get that you think you're a small little hazard and we'll just adapt. But in this moment, in this spot, we invested into the infrastructure that gives you what you want, you then have to give us what we run and appreciate that you are now sharing the road as an equal. And you, and three of you blew through that light. I promise you, If it had been the opposite way, a cyclist would have taken their bike lock and they would have thrown it at one of the cars. Throne it!

You are trying to legislate common sense. You cannot do that. I just want to share the road amongst equals. That's all I want. I'm not looking for special treatment. I don't want cars to get away with stuff they shouldn't be getting away with. I want us to just share the road in a way where we don't get mad at each other.

And I find myself getting mad at each other. because people don't know what they should be, how they should be behaving. That's it. I'll get off of that. Oh, no, we'll talk about this for 30 more seconds because all the other stuff that, poor you, Drole spends so much time prepping these segments

with research and bullet points. And he wants the flow to go a particular way. And then I get a B in my bonnet. I got a fly in my ointment. And I cannot get off of one single topic and all of his hard work is for naught. Can I tell you something in the last 30 seconds? What I've thought about doing, either getting a little placards to be able to put up,

like ones that say, shut up, or move on, or go to the clip, or even just getting a trank dart, and bam. All right, well, I've seen Jurassic Park. Yeah, all right. Hey, well, listen, thank you for indulging me on that. I need to get that off my chest. Up next is public shaming the future for TTC riders. Welcome back to the Ben Mulroney show every now and then I have thought that pops into my head and I share it with you.

And apparently some of you think the same thing. We were just talking about sort of the half measure of putting a traffic cop at high traffic areas who's not doing what I think the most important thing is, which is beginning the conversation about educating people about what the rules and rights and responsibilities are of everyone on the road. Pedestrians don't know how what the rules are around when they can walk and when they can. they can't. And a traffic cop could be very valuable in that moment. And I witnessed it myself that that education portion of keeping the roads moving was not happening. Apparently, this resonated with you guys. And we got a text that said, the cop can stop people and kindly tell them what they're expected to do. Are they just putting a cop there with no instructions on what to do? What is going on here? Well, sure. Like, I can see a world where they just put a traffic cop there

and he's going based on what he knows. But before he goes out there, how about you educate, like the guys who are there should know the rules. And I'm telling you, I know the rule and the rule wasn't being enforced or respected in any way. And the end result was traffic not flowing as quickly as it needed to or could be. So what's the point?

What's the point? All right, let's turn our attention to the crosstown LRT. And there's a very funny, there's a very funny comic in the city of Toronto named Jacob Boll. And you should follow him on on Instagram. He's very, very funny. And he did the math and realized that the crosstown LRT that is still not open

celebrated a rather auspicious birthday. And he wanted to market in a way that honored the turning of the page into a new year in the way that it deserved. Let's listen to Jacob Bolshin. 15 years ago, we began construction on the Eglinton LRT. And to celebrate 15 years since its beginning, we're throwing her a kinseniera. Thank you, Eglinton LRT for 15 amazing years. When the LRT started getting built, I was 13.

15 years, next year you'll be able to draw. You only cost an estimated $12.8 billion. That's only 8.2 billion. dollar is more than expected. To another 15 years of construction. He points out, you can't see it, but he points out on the screen he types that he spent 600 bucks on that mariachi band.

And I don't know how he got access to the platform of one of the LRT stations. I can tell you how? How? Nobody's working there. It's actually Eglinton West. I know that station, the TTC Subway. station. I know that station very well.

Is it, is it? It's the Eglinton West platform. Okay. Well. And nobody is working there. There's no reason to take tickets. It's also a mess. Yeah. At this point, I got a laugh. I'm looking for reasons to laugh because otherwise you've got to cry. They keep on coming up with stories. Oh, some good news. Oh, bad news. Well, we were talking yesterday.

I was driving somewhere last week and I saw that they were testing it again. And as we've said, they need 30 days of error-free testing before they can move to, I'm sure, another phase before another phase and another phase. But this is a hoop that they have to go through in the second that they have an error or an issue.

They've got to go back to the beginning and start the 30-day clock again. I'm wondering if a mariachi band playing on one of the platforms might reset the clock as well. I wonder if that constitutes an error. Oh, no. All right, so there was a story that popped up

that this, I want file this under who asked for this. Apparently with the TTC now, they're doing a pilot project at some pretty big stations, I think Union Station and another one, where I guess somebody's going to be watching what's happening on the platforms. And if anybody does something untoward or behaves in a boorish manner, there will be a voice that comes up over the loudspeaker identifying you and shaming you

and telling you, I don't know what it's going to say, but it's going to say, hey, hey, you, if it's Mike Droulet, if Mike Droulet is, I don't know, you in the red sweater. Hey, you in the red sweater. Hey, you, hey, lurch. You and the red sweater. We see you, and we know what you're doing, and we don't, we want none of it. That's, we are Toronto the good, and that is bad behavior and shame on you.

However, let me translate it to exactly what it will sound like. Okay. Hello, everybody, brer, bra, bra, blah, because those speakers are terrible. I never understand what they're saying. Well, it's Dundas and Union Stations, and they're going to call out specific riders engaging in what they consider antisocial behavior. So what is that? Well, so the TTC chair, Jamal Meyer, says the staff will distinguish between disruptive behavior and people who are unhoused or in mental health crises with appropriate steps. I don't know how you can tell that based on like a quick interaction.

If you can tell the difference, good on you. If you have somebody having, if they get that wrong and say they have the voice from above, talking to somebody who's having a crisis who's acting as a bore and you can't always tell just by looking at someone. and you got this voice well they think that's a voice in their head you got some problems there I stopped at Starbucks before I came into the office today and I was waiting for my drink and this man who was ordering his coffee

he was uh he started talking to me and and by he just looked like a guy and within about a minute I realized that this this man is not he's not in complete control of his faculties he was speaking in non sequiters and and

uttering sentences that just just didn't make any sense. But to look at him, he was standing there quietly, just waiting for his coffee. And then next thing I know, I'm involved. I'm down a rabbit hole with him. I couldn't tell the difference. It took me a minute to real.

And he wasn't dangerous, but he certainly was talking to me nonstop. So I don't know how the TTC is going to be able to distinguish from all this stuff. But commuters themselves are highlighting that this could be a problem. I mean, if you're already predisposed to quote unquote antisocial behavior Do you think that you're going to quiet down if a voice from God tells you that you're being an ass? Or is there a risk of that interaction escalating and getting dangerous?

And I'm not seeing a whole lot of cops down there in the subway. So what's going to happen if one of these guys gets physical? Well, I think we can all agree that the TTC, the subway system in the city, has a problem. Yeah. A very big problem. A lot of different things are feeding into it. and it has to be addressed. So the city has said,

okay, we'll address it by putting some, some other police officers or some special people on some of the subway platforms along the Danforth line. I believe it was like Bay, young and,

young and bluer, and then Bay and maybe Spadina St. George. And then they're going to be doing this now. So they're coming up with ideas. I just don't know if they're good ideas. It doesn't feel like a fully baked strategy. Like I guess it's a pilot project. So they want,

test it out. Another wrong with testing anything, except again, you're talking about people in a dangerous environment where those subway tracks are right there. And the fear that some of these commuters have expressed is we don't know what's going to happen. If you trigger one of these people by naming and shaming them, somebody could pop off. And I don't know that it's been fully thought through. And if the people who are on those subway platforms, are telling you that right now before you turn this thing on, you might want to listen to them. Like that to me is a real fear.

Sadly today, you call people out. You don't know what you're going to get. You don't know if people are going to react with violence. You don't know how people are going to do it. So that's, you're right. There's some,

there's a real danger here. Yeah. Making it work. Yeah. If somebody is, because we saw the video last week of that person who was walking. I don't know if it was Toronto, but it was in a subway,

a subway station, And somebody was like walking very close to the line where they could fall over. Yeah, right on the edge. And somebody pulled them off right as the subway came. They absolutely would have been hit in the arm for sure. That was the least damage that would have been caused. So thank God somebody did that. But what do you do in that moment?

Do you say, hey, you who are flirting with the line and you look like you're going to fall over, please don't do that? Because you startled them. Yeah, you would startle them. And so, yeah, I don't, like I said, I don't know that it's, it's fully baked yet. What I would prefer to see is, all right, let's try, if you're going to do pilot projects on things, do them all in one place to see if like a fully baked strategy that involves

mental health awareness and somebody paying attention from an office somewhere and the cops, if you do that all together, what happens year over year, compare last year's stats to this year's stats and say, you know what, with a police presence, with more active involvement by the eye in the sky with mental health training for all of those people, here's what happened over the course of three months and let's compare it to the same three months last year. But doing a little bit over here and a little bit over there and a little bit down here, I don't know how you get a sense of what's working. But isn't that the way we're doing everything? A little bit of here, we're not doing everything fully big. We'll have like,

we talk about the homeless shelters. Well, you need a lot more with that. Yeah. Yeah. Exactly. Oh, well, listen, I'm hopefully, hopefully, hopefully. Up next, evicted over a penny. That's right, an eviction over a penny. That's next. Welcome back to the Ben Mulroney show. We have a lot of conversations on this program. about how life is just a lot tougher today for most people than it was in years past.

And for some people, it is a worry, a constant worry. Do I have the money? Am I earning enough? Sometimes is the government taking too much that will prevent me from doing the basics in life? And, you know, paying for groceries, putting gas in my car, having enough money to take the subway, paying my rent. these are very real issues that affect far, far too many people. And the hope, though, is that if somebody falls behind, then the worst case scenario isn't going to be that they are turfed and that the locks are changed on their apartment.

Well, what if I told you that there were two brothers who received an eviction notice over a single penny? No eviction hearing, no warning, just an order from the landlord and the tenant board that said the sheriff can come in and change the locks because they paid $1,860 instead of $1,860 and a penny. We're going to drill down in this story because this is, for me, this is a bridge too far, man. Please welcome at Kiyara Padavani. She's the co-chair of the York Southwestern Tenant Union as well as the two brothers we're talking about, Oliver and Carl Henry. To the three of you, I say, good morning.

Good morning. So I, and I'm sorry this has happened to you and I'm looking forward to sharing your story with everyone. But, Kiara, why don't we start with you? I just gave some high level, the high level stuff. Why don't you give us more of the relevant information that you think the listeners of the show need to have? Absolutely. So the reason why this happened to Carl and Henry is because the premier Doug Ford, right after the pandemic, as you know, that was an incredibly difficult time for folks. A lot of layoffs, a lot of people were having a hard.

time paying the rent and so after that the premier passed a bill 184 that introduced no hearings evictions so that's they they call them ex parte evictions and that's for folks who when they fell behind on rent they and their landlords agreed on a repayment plan to help them catch up and section 78 this amendment made it so that if someone was behind or laid on that repayment plan the landlord could file to evict them without a hearing over any amount that they claimed they were behind on. What's shocking about Carl and Oliver's, so that's already bad enough, and so that was Bill 184. And now to make things worse, Premier Doug Ford wants to bring in Bill 60, which had it been in place when this happened to Carl and Oliver, they would not have been

allowed to appeal and hold onto their homes. They would have been on the streets. And so What happened in this case was that the landlord decided to file to evict, again, without a hearing, because they had made an accounting error. I mean, I want to assume I want to give them the benefit of the doubt that it was an accounting error. And they claimed that they were behind on their payment plan when in fact they were more than $800 a head. Yeah, yeah. This is the, with each detail, it becomes more of like a head shakingly. how could a system be this cold and callous? So I'd love to bring Oliver and Carl in.

So like I said, you never fell behind on your repayment plan. You're ahead of schedule. And so explain that how did you discover that the issue that you were dealing with that was the difference between having a roof over your head or being sent out on the streets was a penny? How did you find that out? Well, I went down to the office of my building and I got a notice from my office from my office manager that I was behind one penny on my rent and she was issuing an L4. which means

And the big shit notice And did you try So in that moment You find out okay They're telling me I'm behind Even though I know I'm not They're saying that the difference is one penny It feels to me in that moment

You could have I mean We don't even have pennies anymore But it feels to me that like You could have found one in a couch cushion And handed it to them And we would have been done with it But that Did you try to give them a penny?

When we tried to to pay them the penny, they wouldn't accept it. They wanted a dollar instead. Kiera, can you make sense of this for me? They were ahead on their payment plan. And then you're saying that there was an accounting error on the other side. And it was a, and they owed a penny. We don't even use pennies anymore.

Exactly. So just, please make this make sense. I mean, because people at home are scratching their head saying it's unfair on its face. They were ahead on their repayment plan. This penny nonsense seems almost like a bad faith move. So how does this, how does this make sense? And Ben, you hit the nail on the head. It doesn't make sense.

And the only reason why Carl and Oliver are still housed in their apartment is because they were able to use a mechanism called a motion to set aside. So when an eviction without a hearing happens, tenants only have 10 days to file this motion. And luckily, Carl and Oliver had a tenant union that was able to file this motion for them to save their homes. But what Bill 60 wants to do is even remove their ability to file a motion to set aside, which means had it been passed when this happened, they wouldn't have been able to challenge it. And they would have been kicked. down on the streets. Well, first, I want to be, I want to state it now in case I don't run out of time. I'm so glad to hear that despite all of this, Oliver and Carl are still in

their home. They should not have been able, you shouldn't have had to deal with this in the first place. But let's, let's zoom out for a moment now. It's, I mean, do you think, are you aware of the motivation of the landlord? Do we know why they, he or she or they were being so callous with someone's life over a penny were they trying to get the brothers out so they could, I don't know, jack up the rent on the next person

that they were bringing in? Yeah, good question, Ben. And that's definitely our position. What we're seeing in our tenant union is a widespread tendency of targeting tenants who have lived in their homes for many years. Carl and Oliver have lived in their home

for more than 10 years. They are paying a rents, thanks to rent control, that still exists for buildings built before 2018, that is below what they can get as the top market dollar. So there's this motivation behind landlords to try and kick people out of their homes where they've lived for a long time

in order to bring in higher paying renters at double the rent of what they're collecting now. So they look for any opportunity to remove longer tenants who've lived in their homes for longer to replace them with higher paying tenants. And we believe that was the real motivation behind here, But I'll just clarify for you, Ben, that the landlord filed what, in our opinion, was a bad faith ex parte eviction, eviction without a hearing. Because they used bad accounting.

Like I said, Carl and Oliver were ahead of their payment plan by $800. Imagine in this situation, you're already ahead because you're doing good faith stuff to get ahead of that payment plan. And what the LTB decided, and this is key, the landlord and tenant board realized the accounting error and said, no, we're not going to evict them. because they are eight because they're actually eight hundred dollars ahead yeah of the plan but we will evict them over the one penny they didn't pay for their november for their december rent and that's so when we hear in the when we hear the folks who are proponents of bill 60 saying this is only going to hurt quote unquote bad tenants yeah that this is only targeting bad tenants what we know in our tenant union is that

everyone is at risk when tenant rights get eroded because carl and all did everything right and they still received an eviction order saying the sheriff was going to come and change their locks over a single penny. And that was a decision that the LTV made. So we only have a little bit of time left. And again, I want to stress, I'm so glad this ended well, or it's currently in a better place than it could have been. But I want to end with the brothers, with Oliver and Carl. I want you to paint a picture for our listeners. What would your life have been like? What would you have done? What would you have had to resort to? Had you not gotten the good bounce or the good luck of being able to stay in the home that you're paying for. Where would you be

today? We would be out on the streets. Definitely. We would have been out on the street and wondering what we were going to do. We would have to find somewhere to live and, you know, we'd have to go through the process that mentally and the physically of going through that kind of trauma of, you know, going through that. So it would have been crazy. It would have been, we would have been scrambling, basically. We wouldn't really know what to do because to get kicked out like that and, you know, we wouldn't have much time to do anything to, you know, to try and, and try it, you know, try to find another place and that takes time and stuff like that.

So we would have been scrambling. We would have been, we wouldn't know what to do basically. You know, I'm so glad that that didn't happen. but I can't imagine the fear that you must have been feeling about your life being thrown inside out, upside down, exploded from like that, just like that. And I got to tell you, like there's a lot of reasons I'm proud to do this show. But when I have the ability and the chance to speak with find people like yourselves and with Kiara, who's done great work on your behalf, to be able to share this story with

as many people who are listening, this is, this makes me proud to, to be able to help highlight what is clearly a failure of the system. This should not have happened to you. I'm sorry it did. I'm glad that you're still in your home. But there are other people who are probably not as lucky, not as fortunate. And so I want to thank you so much for coming on this show

and trusting us to help tell your story. And I wish you peace, guys. I really do. And I hope that. Thank you. Guys, thank you very much, Kiara. Thank you so much. Me too.

And as this story develops, Kera, if there's ever any news updates and you want to share, just get in touch with us. And we'd love to keep this conversation going. We'll do. Thanks a lot, Ben. Thank you. All right. When we come back, we want to hear from you, landlord-tenant stories.

There's good and bad people on either side of this. And we want to help. Like, we've got to get to a better place than what we just discussed. So don't go anywhere. This is Ben Mulroney show. Welcome back to the Ben Mulroney. show before the break we were talking with two brothers who almost got evicted from their apartment over a dispute involving a single penny there were we're talking they were trying to

repay their their um the rent that they owed and they were on a payment plan a repayment plan that was uh that they were well ahead of i think they were eight hundred dollars ahead on the repayment plan but because of an accounting error of one penny this triggered a serious of events that could have had them removed from their home. Unacceptable as far as I'm concerned. Very glad to have shared that story. But we now want to open up the conversation to you, the listeners at home.

4168-0-60400 or 1 AAA-225 talk. We want to hear from you. Do you have good, bad tenant landlord stories that you want to share with us? I think there are, look, there are scenarios where there are great landlords and terrible tenants. This was

not one of those cases. And I'm glad that we were able to share the story of the brothers, and I'm glad that it has ended well for them. Let's start the conversation with Steve. Steve, welcome to the show. Hi, how are you today, Ben? I'm doing very well, thanks. Well, great. I'm a landlord 40 years now. Yeah. When I get a bad tenant, it's a nightmare for me to get them out. Yeah. I've had probably 95% of good tenants. Yeah. But I have used the sheriff. The system is very difficult to deal with bad tenants. Oh, yeah. No, listen, I don't Don't get me wrong.

I appreciate that there are very great landlords out there and there have been people who have been abusing of the system and once they're in, really hard to get rid of them. I completely want, I want good landlords to have the tools necessary to get rid of the bad apples, right? I want that. I just, I felt the egregious manipulation of the system in the case that we just laid out that was over one penny,

feels like it feels like it was bad faith. It just feels like somebody was weaponizing a system to evict two people who are doing their damn best to live up to their obligations. I have to tell you, I listen to this. There's something missing here.

I don't know what, there's something missing in this story. I don't know what it is. And why do you feel that? Because I know how hard it is for me to kick people out. I couldn't imagine that they could I couldn't imagine the way that story played. I'd use the sheriff a couple of times.

So I've... And give me a sense. You've used the sheriff under what circumstances? Because I have to assume that's a last resort for a landlord, right? Like you've tried everything else. So give me a sense of what would trigger that option for you. That's the nuclear option. Well, I may be a little different because when my tenants don't pay, you know, we've got to figure out

why they're not paying, if I don't see them going to pay, then at that point, I start the processes that those are in place to get, to be able to maybe ultimately get to the sheriff. And a couple of times I've had tenants where, you know, we're going to pay, I've had to go to court, I've got the judgments, then I've had to get to the sheriff. So, you know, and I've had, and I've had reasonable success. I've had the sheriff in within about four, five, six months to get them out. But there's just, like I said, there's just something doesn't, doesn't sound right about that penny start but I mean I don't know

I'm just saying it doesn't sound like hey listen you've got you've got experience and you think there's something listen we're going to keep an eye on the story and who knows there might be more that comes out I'm just look all things being equal I think this you know two two tenants who are thrown out on the street then become

everybody's issue then now all of a sudden that's more pressure on on all of us to care for them so all things being equal you want people who are trying to live up to their obligations to stay in their home but anyway I do appreciate the call, Steve. Thank you very much. So let me throw one real quick thing in for you.

Sure. Sure. Yeah. I can't keep up with the, I can't keep up with the rise in prices for my rents. Can't do it. Okay. Well, I appreciate the call and I appreciate the conversation. Hey, Alberto, thank you for calling into the Ben Mulroney show. Oh, hi, Ben. Hi. Yeah. How are you? I'm well. I'm well. Thank you. Good. Okay. So, yeah, I rented an apartment years ago with, um, uh, on high Park Avenue, and it was a two-bedroom. It doesn't really matter. But anyway, it was winter. I'd come

home, and the temperature was always around 12 Celsius. So I'd call up the landlord, or sorry, the super, and I'd say, look, you know, this, you know, the temperature is too low. It should be at least, you know, 65, and he says, or sorry, I'm thinking of Fahrenheit. So, so anyway, he said, yeah, yeah, yeah, okay, don't worry about it. So it would never, he would never raise the temperature. So I started calling an inspector in. So the inspector would phone him and say, look, we're going to be there in an hour. This is the issue that this. And so he'd raised the temperature up.

So by the time the inspector came, everything was nice and toasty. Right. And then the inspector would leave and he dropped the temperature again. So unbeknownst to him, I was an air-conditioning heating mechanic at the time. And so I got this device that we had that would monitor temperature rises and decreases in the apartment over the months. So I got together with the tenant association, and we started monitoring temperatures in different apartments. And sure enough, that's what he was doing. And so we took it to Landlord Tenant Act, and we got a months rent free.

Good for you. And I'm sure he didn't do it anymore. And look, that's the tricky thing here is for every story of a bad tenant, I'm sure there are multiple stories of bad landlords. And finding that balance on how you can honor somebody's desire to stay in there. apartment and honor the rights of the landlords who've invested in these properties and need to see a return. Like, there has to be a balance that just doesn't feel like we struck it yet. Can I just, can I just say one thing?

You know, they've established these reits. Do you know, you know what a read is, right? Yeah. Okay, so real estate investment trust. Okay. Well, that is based on profit and people, and they have investors. So that just drives the cost of rents way, way up through the roof. we can't have reeds

we have to either have the government build housing or we have to get rid of reeds and that's what I think well thank you very much for the call I appreciate all right we're going to have to bang through the rest of these quickly because I don't want to miss out on any of them

Pierre welcome to the show Hey Ben how you're doing I'm good if you get I'm up against the clock so give me your thoughts real quick real quick I'm a superintendent of apartment building and we nobody takes any joy there's no fun in having to get anybody out but I'm telling you one thing Ben there's something wrong

with that story, like the first caller said, it takes us five months to get a court judgment. And then the last time we had to use the sheriff, it took eight more weeks for the sheriff to get out. Interesting. It's five to eight months it takes, and I've never, ever heard of anybody being able to back to anybody without a court judgment. And I'm telling you, like, it's no fun. All right.

Nobody likes to do it. Thank you very much. I appreciate it. I've got time for one. Ben, I only have 15 seconds for you, my friend. Hi, Ben. So basically, this is a problem. Like, we have tenants that go nine months, seven months, six months without paying, we can't get them out.

Yeah. And this is a province problem because we're constantly putting landlords against tenants against landlords. All right. And if we solve that issue, I mean, we'll be all the lower rents to make prices more. Hey, Ben, thank you so much. I want to stamp myself one of the best players to ever play this game. Wednesdays on Global. That's how you do it.

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