Some tenants are really, truly awful

Sure, renting in Toronto can be a soul-sucking spiral of doom, but being a landlord isn’t always that great, either. This week, the Toronto Star ran a lengthy story on one Nina Willis, a “tenant from hell,” who has been evicted from at least six homes in the past seven years. Apparently, Willis, who says she has done nothing wrong, either stops paying rent or writes cheques that bounce, and then delays eviction by complaining to the Landlord and Tenant Board about shoddy maintenance, harassment and discrimination by the landlord (she’s lost every case). Landlords say they can’t guard against rent skippers like Willis because the Privacy Act prohibits the board from providing reports on bad tenants, meaning when they hand over the keys, they don’t know what they’re in for. It all makes owning income properties sound like a headache—not that that’s stopping people from doing it. [Toronto Star]