BEAVER BANK: Tenants of Woodbine Park are filing for compensation after a recent Small Claims Court decision ruled that their landlord, Westphal Court Ltd., unlawfully required two tenants to pay for water bills and water submetering equipment.
Westphal Court Ltd. started requiring new tenants at the land-lease community to pay for water separately from their lot rent in 2015.
At least 301 of the park’s 626 units were submetered before the practice was prohibited by Residential Tenancies Policy #45 in March of 2023.
Westphal Court Ltd. also owns five other land-lease communities including Alderwood Village, Century Park, Sackville Estates, Westphal Court, and Springfield Estates, which amounts to almost 1600 homes.
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The submetering scheme was previously the subject of an unsuccessful 2019 complaint to the Utility and Review Board, which found that Westphal Court Ltd. is a private utility and therefore not subject to complaints relating to the resale of water provided by Halifax Water.
Nicole Herd moved into Woodbine Park in 2019.
“Half the homes in the park pay for water while the others don’t,” she said in a release. “The RTA states that all tenants are supposed to be treated equally, and this didn’t sound equal to me.”
She filed in 2023 to contest her water costs.
Nora MacIntosh of Nova Scotia Legal Aid, who represented Nicole Herd and Eloise Graves at Small Claims, calls this decision “a meaningful step in affirming the rights of tenants in land-lease communities.”
Now, Dal Legal Aid (DLAS) is assisting 85 tenants in Woodbine Park as they file for the return of their water payments and the cost of installing their submeters.
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Lyle Mailman of the Woodbine Community Non-Profit Association says their situation is emblematic of a larger issue,.
“Relying on an individual resident to identify something isn’t right,” said Mailman. “Fines need to be issued for violating the Act, a decade is far too long for people to be taken advantage of.”
The Association and DLAS is calling on the government to create a Compliance and Enforcement Unit of the Tenancy Board and to reinstate the Manufactured Home Advisory Committee to enforce tenants’ rights under the law.
“It is a flawed system when it takes such an uphill battle to contest practices of a landlord that contravene the Residential Tenancy Act,” says Eloise Graves.
“This inequity needs to be resolved, and for everyone, not just for us.”
