So your neighbour is a criminal: Landlord says fear keeps people from reporting illegal activity

Living next to an annoying neighbour is one thing, but what if you suspect your fellow renter is a criminal?

The CBC recently received a complaint from a Yellowknife tenant who says she believes she is living next to a drug dealer, and believes the N.W.T. Rental Office isn't effective in evicting tenants who commit crimes in their units. The CBC has agreed to protect her identity because she fears retribution for speaking out.

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"When responsible tenants can't be free of violence and criminal behaviour in their homes, why would they stay in the N.W.T.?" she asked. "I've thought of moving, but another building is no guarantee it won't happen again. The only solution I can see is to leave the N.W.T. and I don't think I'm alone."

According to one landlord in Yellowknife, renters who want to rid their building of criminals have to step forward.

"The complainant is going to have to be willing to go on the record and say, 'I am this person in this unit and I have witnessed this that and the other thing,' and actually take that to the police or even the rental office," said Charles Wyman, property manager with YKD Property Management.

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"Then the other fact is having proof of criminal activity to act on. Without those, there is no case."

Wyman said in his experience, people usually don't want to come forward out of fear. If a renter files an application for an eviction order against another tenant, he or she will have to provide testimonial evidence.

"People don't want to be the one that complains about their neighbour," he said.

"They don't wanna go on record because what if they don't win the case and the person is there tomorrow?"

Eviction after tenant steals from landlord

And the burden of proof is high. The CBC pored over N.W.T. Rental Office decisions going back 15 years and was able to find 12 instances where renters were evicted for engaging in criminal activity in their apartment, which is a contravention of the Residential Tenancies Act.

There were 18 instances where complaints about alleged criminal activity were thrown out because there wasn't enough evidence, or the crime wasn't deemed disruptive enough to warrant kicking the person out of their home.

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That's out of more than 6,000 decisions, of which the most common is regarding rental arrears.

In 2015, the rental office granted an eviction order after Northern Property Ltd. complained a tenant stole security equipment from Crestview Apartments.

"During a routine inspection of Crestview Apartments, [the landlord] discovered that the boiler room where the security DVR system was stored had been broken into and the DVR stolen," states the decision.

"During the execution of the search warrant, officers found and seized from [the tenant's] apartment a DVR, monitor, damaged and disassembled security cameras, a modem, wires, and cables — all items belonging to and stolen from the landlord."

Other tenants have been evicted for threatening an employee of their landlord with a knife, dealing drugs, bootlegging and even bypassing their unit's electrical connection to hook up to free power.

"[The landlord] testified power limiters are installed on units when tenants fail to pay their power bills," states a decision from January 2014.

"The applicant discovered [the tenant] had bypassed the electrical supply box when the power was cut off by connecting a wire directly from the breaker panel to a junction box outside of the unit, thereby gaining additional power to the unit."

Even though it's illegal to bypass a power limiter, the rental officer gave the tenant a chance to pay his rental arrears and electrical repairs to the apartment before the eviction was granted.

More than 350 complaints heard in 2016-17

The rental office issued 150 eviction orders in 2017-18, according to deputy justice minister Mark Aitken.

In an email, he said the office doesn't track how many of those eviction orders are a result of criminal activity.

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"It is reasonable to assume that some of the remedies provided for both 'tenant damages' and 'disturbances' could pertain to criminal activity," stated Aitken.

According to the NWT Rental Office's 2016-17 annual report, the office heard 360 complaints.

In that year, the office provided 23 remedies to landlords for disturbances, and 86 remedies for tenant damages.