In Depth. The New Landlord. Louis Shalako.

Readers will forgive us if we don't use an image of our own building.

Louis Shalako

It was Friday, May 31 when the letter was shoved through the door frame. It had my name on it, the letter inside has my name, address and the date.

It’s from the landlord. Please remove your window air conditioning unit.

Okay.

It’s not like I didn’t see you coming—

I reckon at least three or four households in this building received such letters. This is different from the annual and pretty generic folded pamphlets shoved through the door frames of every unit in the building, regular reminders when springtime rolls around.

People basically ignored it, took their chances, and the landlord took no action. Things have changed.

It’s different, in other words. Steeves & Rozema used to operate the building, but a new company, MillDon Enterprises Limited has been spun off. Essentially, S & R continues management of senior living and long term care homes, MillDon handles residential apartment buildings. It’s all the same staff and employees, they said so themselves. It might also be an attempt to deflect bad publicity from the parent company, when the renovictions begin in earnest.

I removed the a/c within ten minutes of finding that letter. Yet I suspect this is just the beginning. It’s more than just a change of style, even though their first letter, also inserted through the door frame on or about May 26, announced the change of management and also assured tenants that ‘your tenancies are secure’.

No one’s tenancies are secure, not when it’s a rent-controlled building and seven households out of thirty-one have not turned over in the thirteen or so years that I have been in this building. In a local news story, it was stated that ‘rents have doubled in six or eight years’. Well, they’ve more than doubled in thirteen.

Okay, walking down the street, we can see that some units have the snorkel visible in the window, this is from a portable air conditioning unit, often on wheels, with a flexible hose. They are more expensive and less effective than the typical window mounted units.

It is also true that the upper floor on this building has the metal sleeve, a box set into the masonry, with a grille on the exterior. In my unit, there is a cover screwed on and while it is a repository for spiders and a source of some damned cold air in winter, the even more expensive ‘sleeve-type air conditioner’ can fit in this space. My own problem, is not insoluble—or unsolvable.

(He’s just cheap. – ed.)

However one wants to say it. It’s just a question of time and money, or perhaps speed, time and distance when you figure out the machine has to come from somewhere, in some sort of a time-frame, bearing in mind we must get some kind of heat-wave, certainly at some point in the summer of 2024. Someone has to lug that fucking thing up three flights of stairs, unbox it, find the tools, and do some kind of credible job of installation. Interestingly, assuming more than one window, and the little portables seem to be good for 150 square feet, I doubt if the landlord will be saving much on the electricity. This is not about the price of electricity. This is about control.

Either we do without, or we get the portable units. Or suffer. Or try our luck elsewhere.

It’s better than lying in a puddle of sweat all night long, going days (or nights), without sleep, or dragging a mattress out onto the balcony, like the couple in Rear Window, which I suspect would also deeply aggrieve the landlord. It tends to bring down the tone of the neighbourhood, don’t you know.

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(Updated Jun 5/24) $322.00 with tax. Kicking cold air.

In such an environment, temptation reigns supreme. If the landlord even got half of us old-timers out of the building the revenues would go up by three or four thousand dollars per month; maybe even more. This building, by my calculations, is already generating well over fifty thousand dollars a month, but another few grand wouldn’t hurt their feelings. What is that, six hundred grand a year…??? From a building that was paid off decades ago, and has been remortgaged multiple times since then, and has been, in general, a cash cow for the last fifty years…

The game will be to get complaints on the tenant. A request, one that is complied with, isn’t exactly a complaint, but that is the way that it will be presented, when the company goes to make their big play. There will be preliminary steps. They will send around a form, this one will be shoved in through all door frames. Tenants will be asked to provide current phone numbers, email addresses, license plate numbers, the names and number of family members. (Next of kin. – ed.) Your insurance policy number, they will advise you to have comprehensive insurance on your auto just in case one of their branches falls on your vehicle. Your dependents, any pets, waterbeds, aquariums, all that sort of thing.

They will determine which tenants have barbecues on their balconies and ‘request’ that they be removed. When it is time for their annual entry, which is when they change the batteries in the smoke detectors, this sort of compulsory notice is shoved in through the door frame of all units. This is when they walk through the unit and take pictures, and send them back to head office for assessment…they do have the right of inspection, ladies and gentlemen.

And I have the right to write a blog-post. I plead self-defense.

At some point they will re-issue the electronic key fobs and ask to see identification when you go to do so. They’ve already got the place wired for sound with an estimated ten to twelve cameras watching you come and go. This ties in with the tracking feature of the key fob, where they know exactly what time you leave for work in the morning and exactly what time you come home, when you take out the garbage, and also, what with a plastic card to operate what used to be coin-operated machines, now they know all about your laundry as well. They will ask if you’re growing pot on the balcony, visible to children on the street three hundred metres away…

The rentier class has all the power and all of the advantages and one must govern oneself accordingly. To lose housing is to become homeless, possibly for the rest of one’s life the way the provincial government is responding to this issue.

As for the county, they’re having another summit, even as we speak.

I have been thinking of painting my unit…but why in the hell would anyone invest any money at all, in something that would take weeks or months of effort, and a considerable amount of cold hard cash, when the odds are the landlord is looking for excuses…??? If you ask permission, it’s just one more black mark on your record. And if you just go ahead and do it, it’s just one more black mark on your record. If they say no, in writing, they can hardly complain about the paintwork, not after nine years of occupancy. If they say yes, in writing, then you’d better do a damned neat job of it and stick to approved colours. I have no doubt a little communication works better with the average landlord in such a case.

You can also see why I am conflicted. To talk to them at all, is to draw attention.

The building across the street has been vacated for one year. There is virtually no activity from contractors. The thing is basically just deserted. The thing here, is that Steeves & Rozema were at least systematically renovating and upgrading units as they were vacated, singly, one at a time, and as things went along. I would think that just leaves six or seven remaining to be done—a real provocation to the obsessive-compulsive, the sort of person who just wants to get something done, in which case I sincerely hope they are not a psychopath...

I’ve also seen the company truck in here this morning: he came around Friday morning, and later that day, the letters arrived.

Presumably, he’s just checking up on compliance.

It still has the S & R logo on the side, incidentally.

It would be difficult to justify, even to themselves, in renovicting the entire building: after all, my next door neighbours are already paying twice as much for essentially the same unit. Mine’s just a little grubby after nine years on the third floor—and four on the second floor when I first moved in. I am a smoker, I do cook, which includes frying bacon and eggs, French fries, I take showers and baths and other such things. The steam will condense on the walls, taking other airborne pollutants with it. The ventilation has never been exactly good in this old building, a bit of a problem when the heat in the building is set rather low over the winter and to open a window a crack is to essentially freeze in your bed. The same holds true in the heat of summer, up here on the third floor. That whole puddle of sweat thing. With baseboard heaters, simple convection sucks all of that up the face of the walls and some of it is going to stick, ladies and gentlemen.

Here’s my point. The fact that I have been in a rent-controlled unit or building for thirteen years is not my problem, it is the landlord’s…which makes it a problem for me after all.

The fact that there is nowhere else to go, (except Rainbow Park), and that I retire off of disability and go onto rather minimal federal pension benefits and other minor supplements in two months, is definitely my problem. The fact that depression has reared its ugly head again and every little thing feels like a punch in the guts isn’t exactly helpful. Depression is an anxiety-based condition. I would appear to have plenty to worry about, in that sense it is an environmental response to some perceived threat or trauma. 

This is our operating environment.

Click to enlarge.

I also noted this morning, that the rent payment had gone from the bank account. It had also gone up by $1.01. Okay, it’s a new company and a few glitches may be expected due to the sheer number of units, 1,000 all over southern Ontario. This is their first time, in other words. Yet nobody wants to confront the landlord over a measly dollar, and if they have decided to charge a dollar for every e-transfer, that’s another thousand dollars a month coming into company coffers, for essentially nothing. It’s not like they notified anyone about anything, they’d have to put it in writing—and guys like me are known to hang onto such things. I was just downtown this morning, and company headquarters for MillDon Enterprises Ltd. are still plastered with S & R logos. I suppose it all takes time. I’m not sure if they have a website up yet, either.

Other than that—

I plead self-defense…

I believe it was Max Webster who sang about getting used to walking the tightrope. Well, neither federal, nor especially provincial pensions, for example ODSP, have kept up with inflation, even when inflation was low. Disability has always been thirty or forty percent below the poverty line in this province. This is why seventy percent of your cheque goes to rent. The poverty line is currently over $25,000.00 per year and ODSP ain’t nowhere near that. Welfare is so much worse—that one is just a disgrace on the part of the provincial government.

I’ve been walking some kind of tightrope for thirty fucking years, ladies and gentlemen.

Also.

The inflation in the housing sector is something else—it’s just plain crazy and no wonder Rainbow Park has a line of tents several hundred metres long, all along the back fence. I have been told, but have not verified independently, that there are encampments along the Howard Watson Trail as well. The building across the street, where all tenants were evicted as of June 1/23, has been sitting empty for a full year. I haven’t seen contractors in there in months, although someone does cut the grass periodically.

Fuck.

The ability to see the future is highly-overrated. The simple truth is that it hasn’t happened yet, and it may never happen. It is also true that knowledge is power—and to be forewarned is to be forearmed.

Getting old ain’t exactly for wussies, what the hell I’m supposed to do about is a very good question. To sit here and live in dread isn’t exactly my idea of the so-called Golden Years.

 

END

Notes. 

Air Conditioning for Tenants. 

Can I Paint My Unit?

If the landlord really wants to push,  there is quite the backlog at the Tribunal.

Steeves & Rozema to Become Separate Operations.

Homelessness Summit Draws Front-Page Coverage, but no Conclusions, All the Usual Excuses.

(Sarnia Observer, Sarnia News Today.)

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Community Legal Assistance Sarnia. 

Let go the line. Max Webster.

Rear Window. James Stewart and Grace Kelly. One of my top three Hitchcock films.

Backlog at Tenant and Landlord Tribunal. (CBC)

Rainbow Park. (Sarnia Journal) If the police can't evict a homeless encampment, how secure is my tenancy...???

The Cheapest Portable Air Conditioner at Home Depot.

Poor old Louis has books and stories available from Google Play in ebook and audiobook format. Click on an individual title and then click to select either ebook or audio version.

See his works on ArtPal.

The image is of Mary Nolan. 

Thank you for reading, and listening, ladies and gentlemen.