Leniency on leases proposed for victims of domestic violence
Proposed bill would give tenants ability to vacate rental suite early in event of physical or psychological abuse
Cody Punter
Northern News Services
Published Friday, January 30, 2015
SOMBA K'E/YELLOWKNIFE
Victims of family violence will be better equipped to protect themselves from debt if proposed changes to the territory's Residential Tenancies Act pass.
Lorraine Phaneuf, executive director of the Status of Women Council of NWT, said she supports amendments to the Residential Tenancies Act that would allow victims of domestic violence to cancel their tenancy agreements with landlords. - Cody Punter/NNSL photo |
Bill 42, which is currently being reviewed by a standing committee, includes a provision that would allow a victim of physical or psychological abuse at the hands of someone who is sharing a lease with them to cancel their tenancy agreement without facing a financial penalty.
"It's just an additional avenue for safety once a person has been assaulted or family violence has been acted upon them," said Lorraine Phaneuf, executive director of the Status of Women Council of NWT, which supports the amendments to the act.
The Protection Against Family Violence Act already provides significant protection to victims of domestic violence, including a provision that allows them to take over a lease from an abusive partner, according to Mark Aitken, assistant deputy minister for the attorney general's branch of the Department of Justice. Aitken said the proposed amendments in the Residential Tenancies Act provide a companion to existing legislation by allowing victims the opportunity to get out of tenancy agreements that may cease to be affordable.
Although Aitken called the proposed changes "a relatively narrow remedy," he said they could prove to have financial benefits for victims.
"The circumstance that we're hoping to deal with with these amendments, is the circumstance where the innocent party is left with a tenancy agreement that they are a party to but are no longer able to fulfill the obligations that the tenancy implies," said Aitken, adding that Manitoba and Nova Scotia already have similar legislation in place.
"We've been fighting for this with the Coalition Against Family Violence," said coalition member Lydia Bardak, who is also the executive director of the John Howard Society of the NWT.
"It's something that we definitely wanted to see so that no one incurs harsh financial conditions because of some policy that says you can't have your name removed from your lease."
"In the GNWT, every year they will write off some bad business debt to the tune of hundreds of thousands of dollars, but we don't have anything like that for people who are in rent arrears ... So once you have somebody in arrears, they're always in arrears."
Under the amended act, a victim of violence at the hands of someone who has their name on the lease would have to provide evidence of the violence - either through a protection order against their spouse or partner, or a court order that contains a condition stating that the person alleged to have committed the family violence have no contact with the tenant or any child in their care.
The decision to terminate the tenancy agreement would then lie in the hands of the rental officer and neither the landlord nor the person alleged to have committed the family violence would have a say in the application.
After cancelling their lease, tenants would then have the opportunity to enter into a new agreement with their landlord.
Chuck Wyman, property manager for YKD Property Management Ltd., which rents out 160 units across a dozen properties in town, said the new legislation would not negatively impact the company's business.
"I've got lists of people looking for places. If 20 people broke their lease today I'd fill (the empty units) by the first of the month," he said.
The company commonly allows people to break leases for reasons that have far less severe consequences than those faced by victims of domestic violence, Wyman said.
"In Yellowknife people break leases all the time," he said. "If we were in a different market where we didn't have new people coming into town every day it might be a different story but we can be a little more compassion here."
A representative for Northern Property REIT, Yellowknife's largest residential property manager, declined to comment on how the changes would affect them, saying "we don't comment on news stories."
The standing committee on social issues will be holding a public meeting to discuss the proposed changes to the act at the legislative
assembly on Monday.
