The Trials and Tribulations of Angela Cunningham

james wilsonRenting property can be a profitable business in this present combination of real estate prices and interest rates. It can also be a pain in the ass. I’ve been lucky so far and haven’t had any real problems other than a pompous doctor that thought his poo didn’t stink. Other than that my experiences have been generally good and most of my tenants were good, hard working people just looking for a good home at a reasonable price.

Angela Cunningham of Prince George, B.C. hasn’t had the same luck. She made the mistake of renting her property to a local shitbag, James Wilson, who is making her life a living hell. This miscreant, who Angela previously invited into her home for Easter dinner, refuses to pay his rent, refuses to leave and had the balls to turn her property into a grow-op.

Ms. Cunningham turned to the Residential Tenancy Branch for help but, amazingly, received an unfavourable ruling from the idiotic bureaucrats who we pay to protect us from such lunacy. During the hearing, lowlife tenant Wilson even implied that it was HER grow-op and he was just an innocent tenant.

Here’s a few salient points from a recent article on theprovince.com:

Cunningham began jumping through the bureaucratic hoops on June 16 when she served Wilson with a 10-day eviction notice for failing to pay his rent the previous two months, despite continued verbal urgings. She said Wilson accepted the written eviction notice with a smile, and even posed for a picture, in which he waved for the camera.

On the eve the notice was to expire, Cunningham went by the rental property to check if Wilson was preparing to leave. He wasn’t there, but there was no sign, Cunningham said, that he was planning on complying with the notice.

When Cunningham went to the back of the property to check if earlier changes Wilson had allegedly made to the back deck had been restored, she stumbled upon a mid-sized grow-op, consisting of about 80 to 100 plants, in one of the property’s outbuildings.

Within 24 hours, the RCMP, acting on video and photo evidence provided by Cunningham, had dismantled the operation and seized the pot. A Prince George RCMP spokesman said investigators are just finishing a report to Crown counsel recommending several drug-related charges.

Armed with this new evidence against her tenant, Cunningham applied for an emergency hearing before the Residential Tenancy Branch last month. Under section 56 of the RTA, a rental agreement can be terminated early if, among other things, the tenant has engaged in illegal activity that “has damaged or is likely to damage the landlord’s property” or the tenant has “seriously jeopardized the health and safety or lawful right or interest of the landlord or another occupant.”

Given the evidence she had accumulated, Cunningham thought the judgment would easily be in her favour. Wilson did not deny that there was a grow-op at the site, but as it turned out, the arbitrator from the RTB concluded that Cunningham had failed to “provide sufficient evidence to establish that the tenant has acted in a manner such that the tenancy should end early.”

This is clearly another example of government idiots not seeing the forest through the trees. And another example of how renting a property in this province can be a scary ride. And trying to get help from hand-wringing morons that consider every landlord a problem and every tenant a victim makes it much worse. And even more so when there’s scumbags like James Wilson out there.

Oh, and James…welcome to Google search results and lots of luck finding your next home.

Take a moment to sign Angela’s online petition requesting the Province Of British Columbia Legislature review the residential tenancy act in British Columbia and make it harder for people like James Wilson to victimize more property owners.

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