‘Do not occupy’: B.C. single mom learns ‘toxic’ apartment should have been off the market

The home on Mary Hill Road is seen in this 2014 photo from the BC Assessment website. (bcassessment.ca)

A Port Coquitlam mother of two is looking for a new apartment for the second time in less than six months, and she says her landlord’s failure to adequately address mould and moisture issues forced her out.

She also discovered she’s not the first tenant to deal with these issues, and that her tenancy never should have been allowed in the first place, because the home has been subject to an unrelated “do not occupy” order since 2022.

Angela works in the legal community. She asked CTV News not to use her last name because she doesn’t want to associate her role as a legal professional with a private dispute.

She said she and her children moved into their apartment – the upper floor of a house on Mary Hill Road near Shaughnessy Street – on Sept. 1, 2024, but the problems started before the $3,000-a-month lease officially began.

‘A pool of water’

With her landlord’s permission, she began moving in her belongings in August. She said the unit had been vacant for months before she signed her lease.

One day, about a week before her tenancy formally began, she arrived to find “a pool of water” in the room she had been setting up as her home office.

“I couldn’t find any sort of source for the water, but I did notice that there was a water stain on the ceiling that I definitely had not noticed during the walkthrough,” Angela said.

There was also water in the living room, near the patio doors.

Angela said she called her landlord to let him know about her discovery, and sent him photos of the water stain and the damage.

According to the tenant, he called back the next day and told her he had checked the home’s attic and concluded there were no leaks.

This was the start of a pattern, Angela said. Over the next two months, her home would see significant leaks with every storm. She started keeping a journal of the incidents and her landlord’s responses to them, which typically involved ad hoc solutions that didn’t work and visits from a revolving door of contractors.

“He wouldn’t confirm that he was going to hire a roofer,” she said. “He said he needed to have more roofers (take a look). There was just a lot of gaslighting and minimizing.”

Eventually, Angela applied to B.C.‘s Residential Tenancy Branch seeking an order requiring the landlord to make emergency repairs. She said her landlord hired a roofer the day after he was served with the RTB notice, and the roof was replaced a few days later.

While this stopped the leaking, it also rendered her RTB application moot, since the other orders she was requesting – namely repairs for water damage, potential asbestos remediation and pest control – did not qualify as “emergency repairs” under the province’s Residential Tenancy Act.

“Even though I find the remaining items (all the items other than the leaking roof) are not officially ‘emergency repairs,’ they may warrant attention from the landlord in the near future,” the RTB arbitrator’s decision dismissing Angela’s application reads.

“If the remaining repairs remain unaddressed, the tenant is at liberty to apply for dispute resolution seeking general repairs to the unit, or even monetary compensation for any deleterious impacts on her tenancy.”

According to the tenant, the landlord did not address those issues – nor a mould problem that arose as a result of the unaddressed water damage – forcing her to apply to the RTB again.

Bylaw contraventions

While the roof leak saga was playing out, Angela was also learning more about her new home and the man who owns it.

Her landlord’s name is Josip Pehar, but the residential tenancy agreement she signed – a copy of which she shared with CTV News – lists it as “Joseph Pehar.”

Before moving in, Angela searched the name on the lease in Court Services Online, the province’s online court records system, which allows members of the public to look up basic information about most civil and criminal proceedings.

She found nothing of note, and felt reassured about her upcoming tenancy.

Once she moved in, however, and started seeing mail addressed to “Josip Pehar,” she searched again.

This time, she found records from multiple civil cases, the most recent of which was a petition filed by the City of Port Coquitlam on Oct. 22, 2024, seeking a variety of orders against her landlord, including an injunction prohibiting anyone from occupying the building she had moved into less than two months earlier.

“Since 2004, the city has made efforts to address with the respondent certain contraventions of the bylaws by the respondent regarding the property,” the city’s submission to the court reads, before listing various allegations against Pehar.

According to the city’s petition, Pehar has, over the years, “constructed, altered, and modified various buildings and structures on the property without necessary building permits,” operated more dwellings than allowable under city bylaws, and operated a non-compliant coach suite on the property.

“The respondent has not received any permit or approval from the city under the building bylaw for any of the aforementioned construction activities,” the petition reads, adding that the city “has issued do not occupy orders” for the property in response to the alleged violations.

Duelling lawsuits

The city’s allegations have not been proven in court. Reached by phone, Pehar declined to speak to CTV News for this story.

The City of Port Coquitlam provided a statement from Bruce Irvine, its director of development services, outlining the history of the city’s dispute with Pehar and describing attempts to work with him “to achieve compliance” as “unsuccessful.”

“For example, the property owner denied city staff access at one instance, and the city successfully obtained a search warrant to conduct safety inspections,” Irvine said. “Following these inspections, ‘do not occupy’ signs were posted on the property and multiple fines were issued.”

More recently, Irvine said, the city has issued stop work orders and placed a Section 57 notice on the title to the property. Such a notice warns people looking at the title document that the property contravenes municipal building regulations.

“The property owner then pursued legal action against the city, and the city subsequently escalated bylaw enforcement efforts by means of legal proceedings,” Irvine said.

“The city takes enforcement of its bylaws seriously, but is concerned that some landlords renting to residents are adjusting their behaviours and strategies in response to enforcement actions,” he added. “The city notes that the Residential Tenancy Branch and the province also have jurisdiction in these matters and must take more assertive action to ensure compliance and safety for all residents.”

Pehar’s lawsuit against the city argues that the city holds no “equitable interest” in his property, nor any “lawful contract or agreement” with him that allows its staff to enforce municipal bylaws.

No lawyer is listed on Pehar’s petition to the court, and he appears to be self-represented in the case.

“The people of the City of Port Coquitlam responded to me and mention (sic) that some bylaws apply,” Pehar’s petition reads. “The bylaws appear to be written in legalese, a legal jargon I am illiterate with, but they did not show me any proof on the right or interest they possess in my private property.”

The city’s response to Pehar’s lawsuit sets out the legal basis for its bylaws and opposes all relief he is seeking from the court.

“The petitioner seems to allege that a contract, equitable interest, trusts, or agreements must exist in order for the city to enforce its bylaws against the property,” the response reads. “The respondents deny this, and say that the city has authority by statute and by its enactments to enact and enforce its bylaws against private property located within city boundaries.”

‘Due diligence’

After discovering the city’s court filing, Angela contacted the city’s building department. On Nov. 1, 2024, she spoke to the department’s manager, who said he was limited in what he could say because of the ongoing litigation, but advised her to file a freedom of information request.

She shared several of the documents she received in response to her FOI with CTV News, including a six-page, handwritten letter from the previous occupants of her apartment, addressed to her landlord.

The letter details many of the same water ingress and mould issues Angela has dealt with since moving into the unit.

The FOI also yielded an inspection report from November 2023, apparently commissioned by the previous tenants, which found, among other things, “drywall beginning to chip away and lose strength due to unmitigated water damage,” “open and exposed mould on the bedroom ceiling” and “previous affected areas that have been painted over.”

Angela also shared a copy of a letter addressed to the owner of her building, albeit with his name redacted, notifying him of the do not occupy order. Also acquired through her FOI request, the letter is dated May 31, 2022, and includes photos of “do not occupy” signs posted on the building’s exterior.

Angela said no mould or water stains were visible when she first toured the apartment in summer 2024, and she’s frustrated that she had no way of knowing about the home’s history or the do not occupy order until it was too late.

“I did the only due diligence that I think anyone can really do when it comes to looking into a landlord,” she said, referring to her CSO search for “Joseph Pehar.”

Though the RTB publishes its decisions online, they are anonymized and the address of the property is not included.

“There’s no way to search based on an address or, like, a last name. Nothing,” Angela said.

She said a registry that sorted decisions by address would make it easier for tenants to avoid getting into situations like hers in the first place.

‘Qualified restoration company’

Taking the RTB arbitrator’s advice from the first decision, Angela filed a new application seeking an order for repairs and monetary compensation to address the mould and moisture issues, along with an infestation of rats in the attic and potential asbestos remediation because the building was built before 1990.

The new application was severed, with the arbitrator issuing orders directing the landlord to hire qualified restoration and pest control companies to make site visits within seven days.

To get her application for compensation heard, she had to file it separately.

“I had to reapply again, I had to pay again, I had to submit all my evidence and print it, basically go from steps A to Z all over again,” Angela said, adding that the RTB process, generally, is “exhausting.”

“It just makes it really costly and time-consuming for tenants, and then, in the meantime, I’m still expected to pay rent,” she said.

Angela said her landlord has not complied with the arbitrator’s orders around hiring qualified restoration and pest control companies, though he argued that he had met his obligations during the parties' most recent hearing.

The decision on that hearing – which was nominally about the compensation application, but also included evidence on Pehar’s alleged non-compliance with the previous orders – has not yet been issued, according to the tenant.

Even if the decision is in her favour – which she said she expects it to be, given the questions the arbitrator asked during the hearing – Angela is not planning on trying to stay in the apartment.

“They can’t do anything about it, even if there’s a monetary order,” she said, referring to the RTB.

“Once they’ve written it, they wipe their hands clean of it, and I have to go through all the steps to enforce it, which could take years.”

In the meantime, she told CTV News she decided not to pay her January rent, in order to save the $3,000 so that she can pay a deposit on a different apartment.

She said she’s had to expand her search area to locations that are not within walking distance of her daughter’s school, and she’s looking at places with two bedrooms instead of three.

While not ideal, those concessions are necessary to get out of an environment she says is literally “toxic” for herself and her kids.