Dear Editor:
It is absolutely outrageous and nonsensical that Wellington North Power (WNP), 97 per cent owned by the municipality of Wellington North, is considering downloading the cost of delinquent water accounts onto the landlord.
As a corporation, WNP can choose to do business with whomever it wants within its set policies. That means it can vet its customers and/or impose a deposit to open an account.
If they make a mistake in choosing with whom they do business then they have the option to either put the account into collections or to take the debt to small claims court.
However, it is unconscionable that their mistake in conducting business should result in the downloading of their bad debt onto an innocent third party. If WNP is so dismal in its business decisions then by all means sell it to another party … seven interested parties were identified in 2021.
To download a water debt onto the landlord takes this bad debt from the jurisdiction of the small claims court and puts the authority in the hands of the landlord-tenant board – a tribunal that is already overburdened and unable to meet timelines in hearings.
Not only is the landlord then unable to get a hearing in a reasonable time, but they cannot impose the full cost of the bad debt and/or the service onto the rent as there is a rent increase limit set on rented premises, this year being 2.5%.
At a time when the country is in a critical housing crisis, the last thing that needs to be imposed is an additional cost that deters persons willing to rent out property or those wishing to invest in the rental market.
This bad debt imposition is a loss the landlord did not anticipate at the time of renting his property nor for which he is responsible.
This idea also opens the opportunity for a disgruntled tenant to deliberately incur costs by running water to impose retribution on a landlord. This idea needs to be abandoned immediately. How council came to the conclusion that the landlord is responsible for the cost of the water and waste water used by a tenant is inexplicable.
Pursuing such a policy would force the landlord to significantly increase rent for a unit at the time of rental in anticipation of default on services to the unit. It is a simple matter to fill out a small claims court claim or to contact a collection agency in the pursuit of a bad debt.
The municipality/WNP have all the tools they need to recover bad debt and if they are unable to use these tools, then we need individuals working at the municipality who have better skills.
A judgment against a tenant for a bad debt would sanction the offender and curtail repeat activity. Alternatively, downloading the bad debt onto the landlord will only force landlords out of renting their premises or push rents to a higher level than they are currently.
Joy Lippai,
Arthur