The Algoma Community Legal Clinic hosted a public education workshop at the James L. MacIntyre Centennial Library Wednesday evening in an effort to inform tenants of their rights with respect to repair and maintenance issues.
Funded by Legal Aid Ontario, the clinic is a law office staffed by lawyers, community legal workers and staff who provide free legal advice and representation to eligible clients in certain areas of law in Sault Ste. Marie and the Algoma District.
“It’s always been a steady amount of people coming in,” said staff lawyer Marcos Gomez, who helped facilitate the workshop.
“It felt like the right time to do something like this, to be able to hopefully reach more people to let them know about the services we provide as a legal clinic. Hopefully we will get more people to come in so they can learn more about their rights, and what they can do when dealing with derelict properties and landlords who aren’t properly maintaining them,” he said.
More than 40 renters attended Thursday’s session — the majority of them senior citizens — with some in attendance expressing their frustration over a host of longstanding issues with their respective landlords, including a lack of heat, bed bugs, and threats of wrongful eviction.
Many of those issues are dealt with at the Landlord Tenant Board, which is currently making tenants wait anywhere from nine months to an entire year for their case to be heard at the tribunal due to ongoing backlogs.
One individual quipped that “you’re putting a bullseye on yourself,” by trying to enforce tenants' rights with some landlords locally.
Jessica Fischer, who serves as the housing law coordinator for the Algoma Community Legal Clinic, told attendees she is currently trying to establish at least three tenant associations in the Sault, all in an effort to create collectives of renters who may potentially be able to mobilize and fight problem landlords, and eventually influence both policy and legislation at both the municipal and provincial levels.
“Instead of fighting individually, come together collectively, because there’s power in numbers,” Fischer said.
“It gives you greater strength for the collective concerns. You actually have a right to form a tenant association (under Ontario’s Residential Tenancies Act).
“It’s actually an offence for a landlord to try to prevent you from forming a tenant association, or asserting your rights as tenants.”
The legal clinic hopes to host more public education workshops for tenants in the future.
“Certainly we want to do a lot more of these, not only on maintenance, but we also want to talk about tenants' rights, we want to talk about people understanding their rights around evictions as well, because that’s also a big thing we’ve been dealing with,” said Gomez.
“We just want to make sure people are well informed, and know what to expect — know what their obligations are as tenants, but also know what landlords’ obligations are as well.”
The Algoma Community Legal Clinic can be reached at (705) 942-4900 or via email at legalclinic@algo.clcj.ca for more information.