I need to begin by stating the following:
- The situation in the apartment has not changed since my previous communication.
-
That is, the second-hand marijuana (and, now, tobacco) smoke coming
from the downstairs tenant remains constant & oppressive, and is
continuing to affect my enjoyment of the space, my quality of life &
ultimately my health. This unit remains uninhabitable.
- As you have refused to make a good faith effort to address the problem, you remain negligent under the appropriate case law.
-
As you remain negligent, you remain liable for property damage
resulting from the tenant’s behaviour & you remain responsible for
providing me with moving costs to get me out of the unit.
- Further, I still want to move out of this unit as soon as is possible.
What
has changed are questions around the feasibility of a plan to move
until questions are answered about the depth of the new government’s
pending cuts to social assistance. I live on disability due to severe
concerns around my mental health, and specifically an inability to exist
in social settings without behaving erratically due to stress (“social
anxiety disorder”). I simply can’t handle the stress inherent in what
most people consider normal social interactions. You can make appeals to
whatever ideals you want, but it won’t prevent me from becoming
episodic. The working reality is that I am of little threat to myself so
long as I am able to avoid situations where I’m forced to interact with
the people around me, but I have a history of conflict with the people
around me and of being terminated within weeks of being hired due to
conflicts with employees and management - my disability is hard, and
there is little chance of me ever entering the workforce again. I just
need to avoid people, that’s all there is to it. I think my tenancy has
reinforced the point: I can’t deal with living with another tenant that
doesn’t care about the consequences that her behaviour is having on me,
and thinks she has some kind of right to make me miserable and sick. My
contempt for this woman is astronomical.
On June 7th,
the people of Ontario elected a majority conservative government on a
non-platform of undisclosed cuts to social services. As no actual plan
for cuts has been released, other than a pledge to do a “line by line
audit in search of ‘efficiencies’”, it is unclear how deep the cuts to
my income are going to be. However, if one is to take the previous
conservative government as precedent, cuts of upwards to 50% should be
expected. It is impossible for me to sign a lease at this point, until
exact numbers are determined.
I understand that
uncertainty is a fact of life, but this is how people react to
uncertainty: they have to change plans, they have to downsize, they have
to make due with what they have. I desperately want out of this unit.
Over the last several years, I have placed a primary importance on my
health. I changed my diet in 2015 to be more healthy, I quit smoking at
the beginning of 2016 and I rediscovered my bicycle in 2017. But, I am
now unfortunately left in a situation where I have no choice but to
compromise my physical health to maintain my mental well-being, until
more information is available.
I do not have a driver’s
license; I’ve never driven a car before. I decided when I was a
teenager that cars were destroying the planet, and I would do my part to
counteract that by relying on alternate means of transportation. In
hindsight, it would have probably been unsafe to let me drive, anyways,
as the social anxiety would have likely led me to road rage: I would not
have been able to deal with rude drivers. Over the years, I’ve held to
this moral decision as best as I can. While I don’t exactly regret that
decision, it means that moving is a very expensive and difficult
process, now that my father is dead (and my disability prevents me from
meeting friends). The reality is that I am going to need to hire movers,
so I am going to require hundreds of dollars in costs to move. The city
runs a service, but I used it to move in here less than a year ago and
am not likely to be approved again so quickly.
So, let
us suppose that I move to another apartment on August 1st, as was my
plan, and the government cuts my benefits by 50% on Oct 1st. That is
almost certainly going to mean I’ll need to move a second time - or that
I’ll end up homeless, altogether. It is going to be hard enough to find
costs to move once, and I insist they will eventually come from you;
finding moving costs a second time is an impossibility. I must wait,
whether I like it or not - and whether you like it or not, as well.
I
will state this yet again: I want to move out of this apartment as soon
as I possibly can. Right now, “as soon as i possibly can” means “as
soon as the government announces the numbers attached to it’s plan to
cut disability payments”. So, I can commit to starting this process a
second time within days of that announcement. But, I cannot sign a lease
at this time, because I have no idea how deep the cuts are going to be.
As
such, I regret to inform you that I will be suspending the application I
previously filed, SWT-16361-18, to ask the court to sever the existing
lease. While I will need to appear at the hearing, it will only be to
explain the situation to the judge in order to cancel it. I will bring a
copy of this letter to the hearing. I may or may not launch a second
application once the cuts are announced, depending on whether you
co-operate with me or not - I will need to determine what the best step
forwards is when that happens.
The lease remains in
force, and I expect to go month-to-month after that until the situation
is clarified, if it takes that long for it to be clarified. This is not
ideal for anybody, but it is necessary given the circumstances.
I
understand that you may want to react to this letter by attempting to
evict me, in which case I would request that you wait. As mentioned, I
am unhappy here and want to move - but i can’t, or not yet. As i want to
move, but cannot, i will have little choice to fight any eviction
attempts to the full extent that i can - including launching appeals to
the divisional court. When you can’t do something, that means you can’t
do it - even if you really, really want to. Further, I am certain to
react to an eviction attempt by launching a human rights complaint,
which I am acting with restraint in not filing as it is. Attempting to
evict me is going to cost you thousands of dollars that you’ll never
recoup - and is likely to fail, at that. As I want to leave anyways, it
is in your self-interest to co-operate with me in waiting until the cuts
are announced and then settling for costs, which is what I’ve been
requesting all along.
For what it’s worth, I voted for the greens.
In the meantime, I have requested repairs to the unit and received no response on it. I am re-printing that letter.
