Rate its owner? It is possible thanks to this new site
As the housing crisis hits many cities across the country, two Ontarians decided to create a website allowing tenants to rate their landlord.
The duo seeks, through its new Rate The Landlord platform, to rebalance the relationship of force between tenants and landlords.
Although the tool is a Toronto creation and is only available in English, it is already being used by a few Montrealers, only three weeks after its launch.
On the site, it is possible to leave comments anonymously in order to share your own experience with an owner. The idea came to the Ontario pair – who chose to remain anonymous – following discussions with other tenants in Toronto. Many of them had faced difficult situations.
“There was a lot of neglect. We went two weeks without heating at one point. We always had to fight to get the repairs done or to get help,” the co-founders of the site told Radio-Canada.
Already used in Montreal
Less than a month after it started , Rate The Landlord already has users from Montreal, who took the opportunity to rate their owner.
“The very definition of never responds, doesn't care if everything falls apart, that there is mold and urgent repairs to be done,” commented a Montreal resident on April 30. The only way to get things fixed is to threaten the owner to hire someone to fix it and make them pay”.
For now, the platform allows you to leave and view reviews in many cities in four different countries, namely Canada, the United States, Australia and the United Kingdom. Montreal is on the Canadian list.
Worried landlords
Groups fighting for tenants' rights, such as the Toronto Federation of Tenants' Associations, are are positioned in favor of such an initiative, describing it as “important”.
“Unfortunately, it’s a war and the tenants are losing right now. It’s a really tough market. Tenants often pay more than they should for rent. It’s really hard to find a place to stay and often when they move in they find out that the location or the landlord isn’t great,” says Geordie Dent, executive director of the Toronto Federation of Tenants Associations.
For their part, some owners aware of this new invention have expressed their concern. They denounce an unfair platform, potentially conducive to the dissemination of defamatory content, without valid reasons.
