When John rented his Victoria family home to a newly divorced mother of two kids, who said she just needed a place to get back on her feet, it seemed like the ideal situation.
But less than a year later, he was stunned to discover his Fairfield property had devolved into one of Victoria’s most notorious drug houses — where gangsters came and went at all times of the night, where there were fights in the driveway, garbage on the front lawn, and feces, needles and used condoms strewn about inside.
His journey to eviction took months, and was full of bureaucracy and delays in a provincial tenancy system not equipped to respond to that kind of problem. The damage to his home from the broken doors, smashed walls and destroyed furniture will likely exceed $50,000.
It’s a nightmare scenario for John (not his real name, as the homeowners have requested anonymity due to the organized criminals they’ve evicted).
But he’s not alone. It’s part of the rising trend of “cuckooing,” where drug dealers take over the home of a person suffering addictions, who is in a vulnerable situation, and turn the property into a base of operations for drug dealing and production.
“Landlords who know or suspect criminal activity is occurring in their home are helpless,” said John.
“The police are unable to get involved. And the Residential Tenancy Branch is weighted so heavily against landlords, it's nearly impossible to remove tenants, even if there is an immediate threat to the neighborhood and property.”
John and his family had lived in the Victoria home for years before taking a new job in Vancouver. They had successfully rented out the old house to several tenants. On paper, this new one looked reliable too, he said. She even owned a local business with her ex.
But John didn’t realize she was in the early stages of a drug addiction. Only later would he discover she was also in the process of losing her business, her young children and pretty much everything, as the dealers moved in to prey on her debts inside his house.
It’s a cautionary tale — partly because the B.C. government is in the middle of a massive push to encourage homeowners to become landlords in an attempt to increase rental stock during a housing crisis. For example, the province is currently offering grants of up to $40,000 to owners who want to build secondary suites for renters.
Not all landlords will be good landlords. And not all tenants will be good tenants. But when something goes horribly wrong, as it did in John’s case, destroying a home, the problem is that the tenancy system is full of loopholes, delays and opportunities to be exploited by the bad actors involved.
For John, it meant months of unpaid rent before having to serve notices of inspection, warnings and eventual eviction to a house full of drug dealers, by himself, because police considered the matter a tenancy dispute and wouldn’t attend.
They wouldn’t leave. He fought delays in the process, bureaucracy at the residential tenancy branch, and a system set up to provide months of leeway for even the worst tenant, through the issuance of written statements, denials and appeals.
When he eventually got the court order, bailiffs and police came to evict what was by then numerous squatters inside the building. His tenant told him she’d illegally sublet some of the house out to others.
One of the men escorted out told John, “We’ll be back.” And he was, for days, part of a crew trying to break into the house. At one point, on July 12, the same man threatened neighbours with a Taser.
Victoria police, which by that point were able to treat the matter as trespassing, arrested the man and issued a public statement by Chief Const. Del Manak.
“We continue to be concerned with the level of violence and weapons associated with drug trafficking in our communities,” said the police chief.
“Our officers are seeing people, some who are not sheltering outdoors, using tents and other structures to traffic drugs, conceal weapons and target vulnerable people.”
John later found a large supply of what appeared to be crack cocaine and fentanyl hidden away in a bedroom closet, which he surmised was why the gangsters kept trying to return. He said he had to spend $1,000 a day to hire private security just to keep the house – and exasperated neighbours – safe.
“What’s unfolded is sadly becoming more common in B.C., where a landlord is faced with huge financial losses and risks to personal safety because neither the Residential Tenancy Branch nor law enforcement are as responsive as they need to be,” said David Hutniak, CEO of Landlord BC.
“Many responsible renters who are having difficulty finding housing are also harmed, because the financial and personal safety risks for landlords is reaching the point where more and more landlords are leaving the sector and fewer and fewer are entering it.
“This is an unsustainable trend, and we need government to recognize landlords deserve better protections and speedy access to justice so that they, their families and our communities do not have to live in fear.”
John found himself in the middle of several overlapping policy problems in British Columbia today: A tenancy system ripe for abuse, a mental health and addictions system not able to protect those who need it as they slide into crisis, and criminal justice rules that leave police unable to intervene in the earliest stages of what is clearly an organized crime situation because it’s considered a tenancy dispute.
BC Conservative MLA Elenore Sturko, who is a former RCMP officer, said the issue of “cuckooing” of homes by criminals is well-known and sad, because at the centre is usually someone who has slipped into addictions and whose housing is being preyed upon by those feeding them the drugs.
“In the case of these guys going from rental property to rental property, they don’t need any money or anything, they just need to find a vulnerable person to exploit and take over their place, and they will have at least months at their place because of how onerous it is to evict them,” said Sturko.
Sturko said she believes B.C.’s ongoing decriminalization policy, which has led to widespread public drug use, is also to blame because it has forced police to lessen street drug enforcement, which then emboldens organized crime.
“When we talk about predatory drug dealers, people think about on the surface just the drug dealings,” said Sturko.
“But it goes so deeper than that. Being preyed on by drug dealers and gangs means sexual exploitation, being robbed of any social assistance you are getting, being robbed of any income, having your housing taken over.”
She said the government’s attempts to combat unfair renovictions for tenants have also tilted the residential tenancy system too far out of balance, to the point landlords can’t get quick help in a crisis situation such as John’s.
“Every time you increase the difficulty of the process it discourages people from going through it, especially when you hear horror stories from other people about what can happen when it goes wrong,” said Sturko.
John said police told him the entire cast of characters who had taken over and trashed his house have simply moved over to another rental home in a different part of the city where it’s happening all over again.
He said the entire experience has been traumatizing and he’s considering selling.
“I'm not sure we will rent again, and if we sell, that is one less rental on the market at a time when people are desperate for rental housing,” he said.
John has written to the provincial government, including Housing Minister Ravi Kahlon and Premier David Eby, sharing his horror story and urging reforms.
So far, he hasn’t heard back.
Rob Shaw has spent more than 16 years covering B.C. politics, now reporting for CHEK News and writing for Glacier Media. He is the co-author of the national bestselling book A Matter of Confidence, host of the weekly podcast Political Capital, and a regular guest on CBC Radio.
