Ontario woman had a cockroach in her ear. She’ll know soon if her landlord must compensate her

A London woman who had a cockroach surgically removed from her ear should know within a month if she’ll receive compensation from her landlord, London’s public housing agency.

At a Landlord and Tenant Board hearing Thursday, Brandi Bulanda described the toll of her final defeat after months of battling cockroaches in her unit at a London and Middlesex Community Housing (LMCH) apartment on Wharncliffe Road.

“My anxiety went through the roof. I couldn’t sleep,” she said.

She had to give up her job and volunteer work, get rid of her furniture and appliances, and move into her mother’s basement, Bulanda testified.

“I tried so hard to get up on my feet. I thought I had made it and it got ripped out from me,” the once homeless Bulanda, now six years sober, said through tears.

“My independence, my stability, my mental state, my anxiety, my health, my involvement with community. It felt like I was being bashed down constantly. I’m still trying to pay off a debt, completely financially torn.”

LMCH failed to provide her with a habitable unit, and should compensate her for the lost property and lost wages, and the money she spent battling the bugs, about $20,000 in total, her representative and paralegal Geoffrey Hume told the tribunal.

“She suffered considerable hardship both financially and emotionally. We’re not looking to punish LMCH, but we do want to make Ms. Bulanda whole from this experience,” he said.

“It should be no surprise she acted the way she did. She needed to leave the unit, she needed to get rid of the offending items. Her mental health was compromised, her job was compromised by the situation.”

But LMCH’s representative argued the agency did what it could to repair the cosmetic problems at the unit, and there was no reason for Bulanda to get rid of her items.

“She failed to demonstrate how these minor pest issues caused the amount of damage claimed to furniture,” paralegal Preston Haynes said.

Bulanda admitted spraying her appliances damaged them, and no one at LMCH advised her that was necessary, he added.

Each time a pest issue was raised, “the landlord did act in a prompt manner,” Haynes said.

Adjudicator Rema El-Tawil reserved her decision on Bulanda’s application for compensation and said she’d have a ruling within 30 days.

Testimony at the hearing reiterated the challenges facing public housing and tenants in London. Public housing officials described how LMCH has a two- to 10-year waiting list, depending on the circumstances of applicants, and struggles to stay on top of urgent and other repairs in its more than 3,000 units that often are occupied by people struggling with addiction and mental health issues.

In this case, there was no indication Bulanda was anything but a good tenant. She moved to a unit in December 2022 and said she called LMCH immediately about cockroaches.

A move-in report recorded a hole in the kitchen wall behind the stove, but an inspection found “no visible concerns,” the tribunal heard.

For the next several months, she continued to contact LMCH about cockroaches, Bulanda testified.

Sometimes pest control came in and sprayed or left traps, but the hole in the wall and holes near the baseboards weren’t repaired, she testified.

Documents provided at the hearing showed pest control visited the unit in December after the first complaint, in May and in August, after Bulanda had to undergo surgery.

Each report termed the infestation minor.

Bulanda testified she took it upon herself to weatherstrip her hallway and balcony doors, spread powder throughout her unit and install mesh in her vents.

She tried in the spring of 2023 to get the holes in her wall and in the baseboards fixed but was told they weren’t priorities, Bulanda testified.

“That was the end of it. I just felt I was done. I had to live with cockroaches,” she said.

Pests aren’t considered urgent matters for a staff of seven to nine people trying to handle major fire safety, water, heating and other issues, LMCH’s property manager Kacper Obrzazgiewicz testified.

“There are pest issues in every building I’ve ever worked in,” he said.

He acknowledged the hole in the wall of Bulanda’s unit was a “contributing factor” to the presence of cockroaches.

Hume took LMHC to task for its approach to pest control, spraying without addressing other causes.

“We heard testimony that many, many buildings have cockroach infestations that are long standing. It’s unreasonable to keep doing the same thing that hasn’t been working,” he said.

It wasn’t until late August, after Bulanda’s medical incident, that LMCH repaired the hole in the wall, sealed gaps around plumbing and fixed the bathroom floor.

Bulanda described for the hearing how she went to sleep one night in the summer of 2023, troubled by a loss of hearing and something plugging in her ear that she couldn’t clean out with peroxide.

The next day she woke up and went to her doctor, who found the cockroach embedded in her ear canal, Bulanda testified, with a doctor’s note as evidence.

Horrified and distraught, she gave up sleeping in her unit about a week later and began sleeping on the couch in her mother’s basement, where she remains, Bulanda testified.

She sprayed and bagged her appliances and other items and took them to a storage unit, not realizing the spray would ruin the electronics, Bulanda testified.

After a month, she gave up the unit and the appliances because she was no longer working and couldn’t afford to rent the unit anymore, Bulanda said.

She also disposed of her furniture, fearful it was infested with more cockroaches and their eggs.

And she had to take three months off work, losing about $3,000 in pay, Bulanda said.

Bulanda testified she kept her clothes, but lost so much weight from stress that none of them fit and had to be replaced.

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