Photo by Lone Primate/Flickr

Identifying details about the landlord and property have been withheld or obscured because the author is involved in an ongoing Landlord and Tenant Board matter.

Returning home, I enter my apartment to the smell of stale grease mingled with cigarette smoke—which is weird because I quit smoking cigarettes in 2004 and haven’t cooked in here for two months.

The strong odours and carcinogenic second-hand smoke come through the two small vents in my overpriced box in the sky, even though I now have them covered with makeshift filters, duct-taped over like a neighbour showed me. Keeping the duct tape companies in business, I faithfully patch up the vents pushing dirty air into our units, trying desperately to protect my asthmatic airways.

Covering the vents is not the answer, we know, but the building owners refuse to provide working ventilation.

The vents rarely pass the “tissue test” that I’ve come to know well after numerous complaints and so-called “inspections” by landlord-paid HVAC workers and bylaw officers who admit to having no HVAC expertise.

A complaint to 311 results in a bylaw officer contacting the building management, which then usually results in a quick visit from the landlord’s HVAC guy. Tenants are told a fan belt was broken on the roof of the 30-plus-storey 1970s high-rise, but is being fixed now. Case closed.

Giving building management a heads-up allows experienced slumlords to make temporary fixes ahead of the inspection, or to simply turn the ventilation on—or, in winter, turn the heat up.

I know all of this because I live in a slumlord-run building.

With the erosion of provincial tenant protections, including the removal of rent control on newer units, the province has made life even easier for corporate........

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