The NWT’s rental office has given a couple until mid-January to find another place to live in an ongoing dispute over their continued occupancy of a Yellowknife apartment building.
Range Lake Developments has been trying for months to move tenants out of the Franklin House apartment building.
However, the landlord’s prior attempts to move people out were met with resistance from at least one couple, who successfully argued at the rental office that they should be allowed to stay.
Following the latest hearing, at which Range Lake again asked for the couple’s tenancy agreement to be terminated, the rental office has now agreed that this should happen just under two months from now.
At the hearing earlier this month, legal counsel for the tenants argued they needed three months to find new accommodation in the city’s challenging rental market. Representatives for the landlord argued they should vacate sooner, so repairs to the building could begin and to avoid exposing the tenants to hazardous materials.
Advertisement.
Advertisement.
The rental office found the tenancy agreement had been frustrated – meaning the contract could no longer be carried out – due to a fire that broke out in the building in May, the presence of disturbed asbestos, and the landlord’s need to renovate the building and remove hazardous material. This happened through no fault of the tenants, rental officer Jerry Vanhantsaeme said in a decision issued on Friday.
The dispute over the tenants’ eviction began in September, when Range Lake asked all tenants to move out of the building with less than 30 days’ notice, citing the need to do “a complete renovation and restoration” after the fire.
At the time, some tenants told Cabin Radio they had nowhere else to go.
Last month, the rental office issued an order allowing the couple to stay in their home and ordering Range Lake Developments to address maintenance complaints like a slow-draining bathtub and insect infestation.
Advertisement.
Advertisement.
Legal counsel for the landlord told the rental office they weren’t aware of maintenance issues until they were reported by the media, according to the latest rental office decision. (Cabin Radio has previously contacted Range Lake for comment on similar maintenance issues raised by tenants and this case, without response.)
Vanhantsaeme found the landlord provided sufficient proof that repairs had now been completed.
Representatives for Range Lake argued the tenants had “disturbed the landlord’s quiet enjoyment of the rental premises” by inviting guests into the building who later caused damage and by misrepresenting issues about repairs and maintenance to the rental office.
However, in his decision, the rental officer said he found no evidence of such disturbances and noted the landlord had breached its duty not to cause disturbances to the tenants by failing to maintain the rental premises.
Finding that the tenants must move out by January 15, 2026, Vanhantsaeme pointed to a section of the NWT Residential Tenancies Act that states a landlord can apply to end a tenancy agreement if planned renovations or repairs will be so extensive as to require a building permit and a vacant building.
A landlord must hold all required permits and authorizations for that section of the act to apply.
While the landlord provided a copy of a demolition permit, Vanhantsaeme found the permit to have been requested a day after the hearing took place, meaning the landlord did not fully comply with the requirements under the act.
The rental officer ordered the landlord to allow for the tenants’ “quiet enjoyment” of the rental premises until their mid-January move-out date.
