Good morning / 早上好 / Bonjour / ਸ਼ੁਭ ਸਵੇਰ / Buen día friend,

Welcome to the March 2024 Edition of the Openroom Rental Nexus Newsletter where I share what's happening in our community and take you behind-the-scenes as we build Openroom.

Top 1 update from me, Weiting (Co-Founder)

You asked Openroom to help you understand how long a dispute at the tribunal took, or how much money has been owed to date, or if we can help you visualize repeat offenders.

My team and I have been exploring large language models (AI) to understand the text of over 12,000 court orders in Ontario.

Two example insights:

• In 2021, over $77M was owed from non-payment of rent. Yet, 2022 and 2023 only accounted for around $24M. How's that possible when we know Ontario's L1 - non-payment of rent cases has increased? It means the public, CANLII, and Openroom only have access to a mere fraction of the court orders that should be available. The rest are held and unreleased by the LTB.
  

• The postal code M5V (Toronto) had had 121 cases and it is the highest non-payment of rent across the entirety of Ontario's court orders $1,727,041.08. The average dollar per case was $14,273.07 owed.
  

Action 1: We would all benefit if Openroom could tell a more complete story with more data. We need large property management firms to send in their court orders! Please reply back and I'll help you bulk upload.

Action 2: Are you curious about this data? I'm looking for a small group of people to help me pilot test the Openroom Advance Search. Reply back to let me know you want to test with us.

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Court Case Highlight of the Month

Behind every single court order submitted into the Openroom, there exists a story of heartache and headache.

One caught my eye regarding a bad faith eviction where the Landlord and Tenant Board (LTB) of Ontario declared compensation for the tenants after the Landlord issued an N12 - Notice to Terminate the Tenancy and evict due to Reason #2: Sale of the House, when the house has not been sold at the time of notice's issuance.

Read about a Bad Faith eviction case in Openroom

Openroom Stance: As of February 2024, Openroom has started to look at bad faith evictions and ways we can protect the Tenant party. Cases where its dismissed or the Adjudicator has declared in favour of the Tenant, Openroom will prevent the Tenant's name from being searchable inside the Openroom Court Order Database.

We do not alter the original submitted court order. If someone were to search the address or the Landlord, all names would still appear in the document. In addition, we hold no responsibility for other systems and what they do, but we will aim to do good for our community.

In the Broader Community

Three major events got Ontario's attention: non-payment of rent auto-eviction, tenant association's rally, and the Brampton licensing program.

At Openroom, we believe in highlighting what's happening across the nation so you can stay up-to-date. I urge you to make your own conclusions.

A Viral Petition of about 27K signatures: We Demand Automatic Eviction Orders from Non-Payment of Residential Rent - started by Christopher Seepe. Read Now

A rally occurred on Wed., Feb 21, 2024 from Tenant's Rights Advocates: the ACORN organization. It called for rent control, vacancy control, and a rental registry. [Read Now]

Brampton's Residential Rental Licensing Pilot: Efforts were made by residents of Brampton to stop the pilot, led by Ravi Sohal in early January 2024 [Read Now]. According to CBC, the pilot is now undergoing rework to relaunch [Read Now].

Opinion articles:

Story: Somewhere you'd never want to be by Guest Author Rachael A. (Citizen Anthropologist, Tenant Advocate) on Toronto's shelter standards for the homeless. Read Now

Story: Given illegal 18.8% rent increase by Guest Author Anonymous (Dad, Tenant Advocate, Researcher, Professor) on how this impacted his kids and family. Read Now

Calling for Your Help

Staying educated as a community member of the rental ecosystem is of utmost importance because that's the only way we can get to the root cause and find the most appropriate solutions.

If you're in the Mandarin-speaking community, we're doing more for you. Paralegal Alec Yu is joining me to deliver some of the fundamentals of rental properties on Tuesday, April 2, 2024.

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What else?

21 Rental Housing Providers (RHPs) gathered in Toronto across 6 Saturdays to learn about how to run a compliant and profitable rental business.

After 13 years as a small-scale housing provider, I am still saying "wow, I didn't know that". Owning a rental business is tough, especially if you are treating your customers (aka Tenants) right.

Great news is we've turned it into a virtual training program launching Saturday, April 6, 2024 to reach more of you who couldn't join us in-person in Toronto. It's a physical-meets-virtual approach we're taking!

Check our Virtual RHP Training Program

What do you think of this March newsletter?

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Weiting Bollu

Mom, Rental Housing Provider, Rental Housing Advocate,
Educator, and Openroom Co-Founder

Instagram | TikTok | LinkedIn | Virtual RHP Training Program

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