Winnipeg Free Press
July 2, 2001
AN absentee landlady $10,000 in arrears on her Winnipeg rental properties
wants
someone -- anyone -- to take them off her hands. But whoever steps forward
better beware: They will also take over her debts.
"I can't come up with the money. Before I sink, why don't I just give
them away?
That's where I'm at," said Brenda Bolton of Vancouver, who blamed soaring
heating bills, her property manager and troublesome tenants for her situation.
"I've got three children and a life in Vancouver. I'm not a slum
lord," insisted
Bolton, who is flying to Winnipeg today to examine the options available for
ridding herself of the three rental homes.
The properties are at 163 Evanson St., 517 Magnus Ave. and 294 Beverley St.
Bolton's situation illustrates a problem common to many residential landlords
in
Winnipeg: The cost of doing business often outweighs the benefits.
That leaves the city's core -- with its stock of older rental properties in
need of
continual upkeep -- particularly vulnerable to further decay.
Applications for rent increases above the allowed 1.5 per cent are already
swamping the province's residential tenancies branch.
Branch director Roger Barsy said last week that since Jan. 1 his office has
received
197 applications for a bigger rent increase. In the same period of time last
year,
they received 66 applications.
Most of the applications are to offset the sharp increase in natural gas
costs from
this past winter.
For Bolton, it is the Evanson address that accounts for the single largest
chunk of
her arrears, with $3,000 in outstanding heating bills alone.
Bolton also holds a $30,000 mortgage on the Evanson property that would have
to be assumed by whoever was willing to take over ownership -- on top of the
property's outstanding bills and back taxes.
She is part owner of the other two properties and said she is in contact with
her
partners, who also live in Vancouver, but until she gets formal clearance from
them, she can only legally walk away from the Evanson home.