Any suggestions for Addendum to TRA for renting to students ?

[6ofus]

We've decided to rent rooms "individually" to students in our downstairs basement. This has been a successfull task so far until we ran into a new student.

He arrived November 1st with the story he broke up with his girlfriend, it didnt work out. He goes to college and has 2 jobs and it seemed like a good fit. Then December 1st he tells us he that he has a "daughter" which is actually his ex girlfriends daughter and he took it upon himself to be here "2nd daddy".
Fast forward another month and we find him and the little girl leaving the suite one morning! He hadnt asked us if she can sleep over or if he can even bring her there. We have other male students who share the common area and were mortified he brought a 7yr old to the suite in the first place.
And because we never signed an Addendum with him he said he will "excercise his rights" as a tenant.
We said to him you "lied" about your situation and this is not your entire suite, but that you rent out 1 room only and the occupation of the rest of the common area has to be mutually satisfiying for all occupants and bringing a child here will not be comfortable to the other male students.

Now he has us cornered. He agreed to help his girlfriend out and babysit her 8 yr old daughter couple times a week. He wants to be able to bring her into his room from around 4-ish to 7-ish which would be when her mom is finished work. He says he never signed an Addendum and has this right.
he's now drafted up a "Addendum" if you wanna cal it that...and we dont know what to do...
any suggestions?

[Selanne_200]

well I think you're going to be in a little bit of a bind. The agreement usually doesn't stipulate the amount of person living under the agreement. As long as the tenant doesn't affect the reasonable enjoyment of the property by other tenants, there is not much you can do I don't think. Since the term reasonable is arbitrary, in a hearing, you may not win. You can always double check with an officer from rtb to see what they make of the situation
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[Gridlock]

Ok, first, I hate the "exercise my rights" people. Yeah, they DO have rights-but its a swing your dick statement. You exercise your rights, and I'll exercise mine.

What exactly do you have signed with him? Standard lease?

His defense will be that under the standard lease, you can't restrict guests.

Your offense will be that having a child in this situation is going to affect the quiet enjoyment of the unit for the other tenants.

His will be easier to prove, but you'll just have to make sure the "judge" is aware of the extenuating circumstances.

Is he bringing the kid from 4pm to 7pm a couple nights a week, or is the child staying over night?

Going forward, specify on your lease that its single occupancy, so you don't have the problem again.
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[dinosaur]

RTA does not allow you to govern over who or what type of guests your tenant has unless he or she is breaking any agreed upon tenancy laws (threatening health and safety, quiet enjoyment, etc). A landlord is also not allowed to restrict hours or frequency....this means if a tenant wants to have a guest over every single day from 1am-5am, they are allowed to do so.

The only time a landlord can enforce some type of rule over guests is if that quest stays more than 14 consecutive days unless the tenant has written permission to do so. After 14 days, the guest can be consider as a tenant and will need to apply to live in the suite and be added to the tenancy agreement. But, like I said, if a tenant has a friend from out of town staying for a month or so, that tenant can get permission from the landlord.

In this situation, unless the daughter is creating some issue that breaks a RTA rule, he can do as he pleases. He is right.

[Gridlock]

I'm going to add...I never sign tenant produced documents. I've had a few that had things all nicely prepared ready for me to sign with the written terms of whatever negotiation we had. Haven't signed a single one. I don't even read them.

You want a doc that states the terms? Give me 10 minutes and I'll have one for you.

[cunninglinguist]

Originally Posted by Gridlock

I'm going to add...I never sign tenant produced documents. I've had a few that had things all nicely prepared ready for me to sign with the written terms of whatever negotiation we had. Haven't signed a single one. I don't even read them.

You want a doc that states the terms? Give me 10 minutes and I'll have one for you.

What is the purpose of this? Psychological?

[GLOW]

Originally Posted by cunninglinguist

What is the purpose of this? Psychological?

i'm thinking his house, his rules. grid runs the building and chooses whom to rent to, based on his terms and conditions, not someone else's

[dinosaur]

yeah, he is kind of an asshole like that :P

but in our defense....the ones that make their own documents are always the pricks that have the attitude that we are here to serve them....not to mention, they are always filled with misinformation and shit they think is "their right". if we let one through...the rest stamped the gate.

the branch has forms for everything.....we stick with those because we can't go wrong. all other documents are up for 'interpretation'.

[Gridlock]

Originally Posted by cunninglinguist

What is the purpose of this? Psychological?

Some of it, yes.

Mostly, its precedent. Documents are invariably written with a bias towards the author. I don't want to set a precedent that you can continually push the line. When you start dealing with people en masse my goal isn't to screw 'A' person. In fact, contrary to some opinions, I don't want to screw ANYONE. I want a happy, harmonious life with people that keep their shit in order, pay their rent on time and treat us, and their neighbors with respect. You don't need to like me. There are some that I don't like, but I can respect. And usually, these documents are born from: 1)a deviation from the norm 2) extenuating circumstances 3) permission to break some rule or guideline.

In that scenario, there is only ONE document that I care about: The Residential Tenancy Act. I treat it like the constitution. Sounds corny, but its true.

So, someone has an issue and wants a written document with the results. So they hand me one. Now I need to read it, understand it and now negotiate that this is correct, this wording needs to be changed and so on. Now we're like lawyers across a boardroom table-and guess what? I don't get paid to sit there and waste my time f'ing around with some document that is going to end up being useless.

So I simply refuse to read them. End of debate. I don't care what it says, and what I agree with and what I don't. I'm not reading a word of it.

So its time management wrapped with psychology. Now we're reading MY document and can agree and disagree with MY interpretation. I already have a copy, and I can already speak to its terms. It's faster, and more efficient.

[Gridlock]

I just wanted to add something, kind of an aside to the whole conversation.

Some people just expect to get fucked over.

We had one guy that was a tenant produced document guy...knew the act inside and out and was quoting it back to us(dino...I think you should know who, but squeegee) He was wrong about the RTA, and I don't think he knew that different provinces have different acts. But the shit rules he was quoting weren't at all from BC. Idiot.

He lost his shit...there was yelling in the lobby, swearing(ok, the swearing was more me) just off their rockers, him and his ugly ass girlfriend.

EVERYTHING was born out of the perspective that we were out to screw him. Now, here's the funny part. Until he called US and started losing his shit almost immediately(may have been when Dino laughed that they were expecting to walk out of the building scot free with 24 hours notice) he was an annoyance, but we weren't sitting upstairs plotting their destruction. We were like, "we have a problem"

So, he ended up going nuts because in HIS mind we were screwing him for not letting him screw us. We were supposed to just take it that the apartment was going to be empty because they didn't like it.

In the same situation, here is where WE were at: we didn't like them, they were a bad fit for the building. We knew right away. If they had come to us with a minimal sense of collaboration...what can we do to make this work out? We could have sat down, listed out the issues that we had-a month's worth of rent, the fact that they painted the apartment to look like a fucking circus tent and their issues, they didn't want to live there and had a sec.deposit to cover some out of pocket-we could have talked it out, been flexible and EVERYONE could have been happy.

Instead, we fought for 24 hours, they invented a bedbug problem and we took their security deposit, AND left them with having bought $400 worth of circus paint, yelled at each other for ALL to hear for 24 hours at regular intervals, and laughed as they threw the last of their shit in the back of a cab and took off like they set a bomb to detonate.

So we screwed them. Not the happy ending I was working up to, was it?

Not illegally, and not in the traditional sense, but it certainly didn't have a "lets shake hands at the end" kind of vibe. We got screwed too, but I was happy that they were going to miss the money they were out, FAR more than my rich clients were going to miss their portion.

My point is, they wouldn't have it any other way. From day one, they approached everything with the attitude of us out to fuck them(figuratively, most definitely NOT literally). So, if thats the tone of a conversation, then I'm not going to be collaborative at all. I'm going to approach it from an "us vs. them" position.

[sh0n]

What dino said about the 14 day thing is correct.

Also you as a landlord cannot restrict your tenant from having guests or having guests that stay overnight.

What type of lease did you sign? Does it end soon or is there a way to break it if you are unhappy with the guy and the daughter?

Post a response and let us know what happened in the end.