Guelph mom fighting eviction for second time in less than a year

A year ago this month, Guelph resident Shannon Bray had an accident that put her in a wheelchair. The injury itself would be difficult enough for most people to cope with. But on top of it all, she is now facing a possible eviction - for a second time.

There are all kinds of humanitarian reasons why I don't think we should be made to move out," said Bray, who has lived at 86 Yarmouth St. with her young son for more than three years.

Her first brush with eviction started last fall when the then owner of the building served her with an N13 notice saying he planned to convert her one-bedroom unit to storage for the building's other tenants.

The N13 form is used when a landlord wants to end a tenancy to demolish a rental unit, renovate it, or convert it to another use.

Bray chose not to leave and to fight the subsequent eviction notice at a hearing before the Landlord Tenant Board, but by the time that hearing took place, the building had been sold.

Initially, it appeared the new landlord - a company called Robmas Capital Corp. - might decide not to move forward with the eviction.

They offered to drop all the court stuff' if I agreed to a $70 increase in rent," said Bray of the deal she was offered in March by the property managers for the new owner.

She says she was also asked to sign a new one-year lease.

Bray knew she shouldn't be required to sign a new lease, and as her rent had just increased by the allowable amount at the beginning of January, another increase in March should not have been required either. She wasn't sure how to react to the request.

A pang of fear came over me that maybe I should just shut up and take the deal and secure my tenancy," she said.

At the same time, Bray worried there might be consequences to signing a new lease that she couldn't foresee.

She didn't sign.

Instead, she had an advocate from the Canadian Centre for Housing Rights send a letter about Bray's ongoing need for disability accommodations.

According to the centre's website, Under the Human Rights Code, landlords are obligated to accommodate a tenant's disability by taking action to make their unit accessible."

While her unit is on the ground floor, there are several small steps Bray must navigate to get in and out of the building and her apartment. She uses the building's backdoor, where there is a ramp, but in wet weather, she has difficulty navigating the unpaved driveway. The door is also difficult to unlock and open while maneuvering her wheelchair.

She has asked for ramps to be installed that would allow her to use the building's front entrance and for some form of automatic door opener.

While the new owner has fixed some things - the door buzzer system, for example - Bray's other requests have more or less been denied.

Bray said she stopped hearing from the property managers after the letter from the CCHR.

She continued to prepare for her eviction hearing, only to receive an email from a paralegal the day before the hearing, notifying her of the new owner's intention to cancel the application to evict.

No representative for the landlord showed up to the hearing, and it was considered abandoned," said Bray.

That should have been good news, but in a subsequent phone conversation, Bray said the paralegal warned her to expect a new N13 notice.

She received the notice with an accompanying letter from Small Matters Licenced Paralegals on May 12.

The letter, signed by Lisa Nadon, a paralegal for Robmas Capital Corp., states that any previous N13 notice is null and void."

It goes on to acknowledge disability accommodations Bray had requested but says those requests come at a high cost and would put financial hardship on the landlord."

Inquiries made to Sebastian Sambor, director of building owner Robmas Capital Corp., were not answered by the publication's deadline.

Reached by telephone, Nadon said she would not comment.

The property, located at the corner of Yarmouth and Suffolk streets, includes business and residential tenants. It was sold to Robmas Capital Corp. on Feb. 1 for $7 million.

While the previous landlord had planned to evict Bray to renovate her unit, the most recent N13 notice she received says little about any work that will be carried out on the apartment. In a box titled details of the work," the form reads this unit will be converted to an office for the owner of the building."

Bray is gearing up to fight the eviction and has started a GoFundMe campaign in hopes of hiring legal representation.

I personally have hit a wall with dealing with this stuff on my own," Bray said.

At the same time, she continues to look for apartments elsewhere but has faced challenges.

There is just not that much out there that is even close to being what I could afford," she said. I would be gone tomorrow if I had some place else to be," Bray said.

STORY BEHIND THE STORY: This story is a follow-up to a previous story about a possible "renoviction" faced by a Guelph Tenant. As the Mercury Tribune reached out to learn the outcome of the tenant's case, we learned the building had been sold and the tenancy was still precarious.