Are You a Rental Housing Professional?

ROMS BC is very excited to announce the long- awaited arrival of an accreditation program for landlords in BC. Members currently have access to workshops on more than 25 topics ranging from tenant selection to enforcing orders, but until now there was nothing physical to show for the time you spent improving your knowledge. You will now be able to show that you are more than just an average landlord; you are a Rental Housing Professional. Many members take as many workshops as they can, and accreditation will be a wonderful way to recognize this dedication to landlords improving their professional and managerial skills.

The ROMS BC Rental Housing Professional accreditation program is open to all members and members’ staff, including but not limited to office staff, on-site managers and caretakers. Participation is as easy as attending workshops and collecting credits. Five credits are required for accreditation, which lasts three years and can be extended. Workshops of four hours or less are worth one credit, while workshops over four hours are worth two credits. And as a bonus; once you acquire four credits, your fifth workshop is free (up to a $49 value).

Credits will be offered for any workshop presented by ROMS BC!that has a cost of $29 or more [before any applicable discount]; workshops presented by Associate members are not eligible for credits.

But what about all the workshops members have already taken? ROMS BC is willing to award credits for any workshop attended after January 1st, 2011.

ROMS BC recognizes that many members act as landlords with their spouses or business partners, and that their combined knowledge contributes to their success. Because of this, in addition to individual accreditation, joint accreditation can be achieved. (Joint accreditation is not applicable for property managers or staff.)

--Hunter Boucher

The "H" Word; Is Your Tenant A Hoarder? - A Two Part Blog Series

Part Two

The Issue
In our industry, whether or not someone has this mental illness is not the issue; what landlords need to worry about is the potential for harm when someone accumulates a large amount of clutter in his or her rental unit.

If another tenant or neighbour complains and accuses one of your tenants of being a hoarder, how should you respond?  Your first step is to do a routine inspection of the rental unit. Once inside, answer two questions; a) would emergency responders be able to get into and move around in the rental unit, and/or does the clutter represent a fire hazard, and b) is there the potential for (or are there already) sanitary, hygiene and/or insect or rodent infestation issues?

If the door to the unit won't fully open without the assistance of someone on the other side, or there is no way to move from room to room once inside, then the tenant is jeopardizing his or her own safety and potentially the safety of other occupants of the property. As an example, a 79-year-old woman died in a fire at her Washington row house when her hoarding held back firefighters from reaching her in time.

If the rental unit could not be considered to meet reasonable health, cleanliness and sanitary standards, this is a breach of both a material term of the tenancy agreement and the Residential Tenancy Act by the tenant. A rental unit in this condition could also lead to a pest infestation, putting the interests of other occupants at risk as their units could also become infested - especially if the amount of possessions in the infested rental unit is such that a pest control operator could not successfully apply treatments.

In the end, the issue is not whether or not your tenant is a capital-H hoarder or has or doesn’t have a mental illness; what you need to establish is whether or not there is potential for the quiet enjoyment or safety of the tenant and other residents to be affected.

-- Carly Ludwar