Winnipeg landlord who evicted tenants faces $9K in penalties

October 9, 2024 Canuck

A Winnipeg landlord who evicted dozens of tenants from his College Avenue apartment building faces $9,000 in provincial penalties, a provincial government spokesperson told CBC News.

Kelly Vasas is the sole director of the numbered Manitoba company that owns 285 College Ave., where the evictions took place. The province alleges those evictions were illegal.

The Residential Tenancies Branch issued 32 orders to the landlord after residents were forced to leave with little warning on July 12.

Tenants told CBC at the time that they were offered cash to move out, and many of their belongings were taken from their apartments and thrown out.

In the days following the evictions, the province expressed “outrage” and hired locksmiths and security to allow tenants to move back into the building.

The RTB has since also issued notices of penalties totalling $9,000 so far, which can be appealed to the Residential Tenancies Commission, the provincial spokesperson said.

Garry Sinnock, Vasas’s lawyer, told CBC his client has appealed the penalties. A hearing is scheduled for the end of October, Sinnock said Wednesday.

A man and women hug each other outside on the steps of an apartment building. — Dwayne Sumner hugs his partner, Devony Hudson, on the steps of 285 College Ave. on July 22. (Gary Solilak/CBC)

Penalties totalling $9,000 feels low for causing so much stress and upheaval, Sarah Cooper, an assistant professor in the University of Manitoba’s city planning department, told CBC Tuesday.

Cooper doesn’t believe Manitoba’s regulations and their repercussions are tough enough, even though the province has some of the strongest residential tenancy regulations in Canada, she said.

Provincial companies office and land titles documents obtained by CBC News show Vasas is connected to at least eight apartment buildings in Winnipeg’s Centennial, Spence, St. Boniface, St. John’s and West Broadway neighbourhoods.

St. Boniface Street Links, who had helped house multiple people experiencing homelessness in the College building, says some of their clients have returned to encampments since being evicted.

Michelle Wesley, the organization’s program co-ordinator, said one of them is a young mother, whom Street Links had set up with furniture and a nursery.

The ordeal at College has left her client without hope, Wesley said.

“It’s very sad,” she said. “This is somebody’s mother, you know, somebody’s daughter, somebody’s auntie.… We really need to be more compassionate.”

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