"Turban twister": BC landlord says hate-filled outbursts not enough to evict tenant
Editor’s note: This story contains language that some may find disturbing.
A BC landlord is speaking out after she says she has faced continued racist harassment from her tenant, whom she says she can’t evict due to BC’s current tenancy laws.
Aman Sahota tells Daily Hive she has faced an onslaught of racial abuse from her tenant for months, including emails calling her a “dirty f**king turban twister” and an “ugly f**king curry stain.” The emails also include comments telling her to “pray over rats and drink milk with them.”
Sahota says the insults have been targeting her and her family since they were faced with an ordinance from the Residential Tenancy Branch (RTB) to settle a dispute between the tenant, Tracy McConville, and her upstairs neighbour in the Burnaby home.
“We were served with that ordinance from the City of Burnaby to make the place compliant,” she said.
In videos from the home’s security cameras, McConville can be seen swearing at the door camera and using a series of racial slurs directed at the upstairs tenants, including “rice ball” and the N-word. McConville claims that these comments were made toward the upstairs neighbours after she says they made offensive comments to her.
Daily Hive has included videos provided by Sahota, but they have been blurred for privacy reasons and censored in part due to the offensive language.
During multiple attempts to settle the fights between McConville and her upstairs neighbours, Sahota and her family started receiving offensive messages.
“We probably got anywhere between three and 400 emails from her and phone calls from her consistent harassment,” said Sahota. She shared emails with Daily Hive, which contain offensive language that has been edited due to its disturbing and racist nature.
The RTB decision
Sahota decided to talk about the situation with Daily Hive after attempts to evict McConville with the Residential Tenancy Branch proved futile.
Residential Tenancy Board decision between Amrik Sahota (Aman’s father) and Tracy McConville.
“We took her to the RTB and the RTB said this isn’t a notice to vacate, this is just an ordinance, so she can continue to live there,” said Sahota. “We lived with that, but that didn’t mean that the harassment stopped.”
“They didn’t feel that [the emails and videos] met the criteria of harassment or disturbing the quiet enjoyment of a landlord,” she said about the September 2023 decision.
In it, McConville admitted she posted slanderous allegations against her landlord online and submitted audio recordings she claimed were evidence of her landlord calling her derogatory names, but they were found to be unclear and inaudible.
The RTB decision stated that despite Sahota’s videos and messages, “the landlord did not provide compelling evidence to support her claim that the tenant had significantly interfered with or unreasonably disturbed another occupant or the landlord.”
Not only did Sahota lose, but the arbitrator, Edwina Nazareth, found that McConville was entitled to a one-time deduction of $100 from future rent.
“I have reviewed the submissions of both parties, and I have formed the opinion that the past six to nine months have been very stressful on both parties for different reasons. It is my determination that the parties currently find themselves in a situation which has progressively evolved and for which each has made some contribution to its unfolding,” Nazareth said in the decision, adding that the tensions between McConville and the upstairs tenant probably didn’t help the relationship with McConville and her landlord.
Filing police reports
When her attempts with RTB didn’t work, Sahota turned to the police in January earlier this year. Again, she did not get far.
Extract from the harassment report submitted to the police by Aman Sahota.
“Because there isn’t any physical damage to either property or a person, there’s nothing that they can do. So, her simply just using this kind of language, there’s no repercussions for that at all,” Sahota said.
When Daily Hive contacted the Burnaby RCMP about the situation, they responded by saying that their “officers are continuing to make efforts to ensure the safety of all parties involved.”
They further added that they have consulted with the BC Hate Crimes Unit regarding this dispute and clarified exactly what constitutes a hate crime.
“A hate-motivated crime is any criminal offence motivated by a suspect’s hate, prejudice or bias against an identifiable group,” the Burnaby RCMP shared.
They further distinguished the difference between a hate-motivated incident and a hate-motivated crime.
“A hate-motivated incident may be motivated by the same factors as a hate-motivated crime, but does not meet the elements of a criminal offence,” they wrote.
Sahota said the whole thing made her feel hopeless.
The tenant’s side of the story
McConville shared a different story when Daily Hive reached out.
She confirmed that she had “several issues” with the previous tenant and that “names were called back and forth.” In her email, she alleged that the previous tenants made vile comments to her, including “Go suck on your son’s c**k” and “How does your son’s c**k feel?”
McConville wrote that the comments made were only ever to the previous tenants after they called her “racial slurs.” She disputes the landlord’s claims and instead claims that the landlords used insults toward her, calling her “white scum and white trash.”
She also alleged that they made death threats to her; however, despite attempts from Daily Hive to obtain evidence, McConville was unable to provide videos, recordings, texts, or emails to support these allegations.
In the one video provided by McConville, the landlord can be heard saying, “F**k you,” as the tenant asks where her mail is. McConville alleged that Sahota stole her mail but provided no evidence of this claim either.
“Police came and warned him not to steal my mail or he is going to be charged,” McConville said.
McConville alleged that the Sahota landlords are trying to evict her to be able to sell the property, and that they have made “living conditions [horrible]” for her. She shared that her suite has asbestos and claimed there were a series of other issues in the apartment that the landlords were not fixing, including flooding from a damaged ground water pump.
A copy of the asbestos report filed by Tracy McConville.
She emailed Daily Hive saying that the situation is causing her a lot of stress as she is unable to move because she has a few health conditions and pets.
“The landlord and all his grown children have harassed me so badly and they wont stop,” McConville wrote.
“I am going to speak to a therapist because of all of this stress. They just won’t stop and I feel I am in real jeopardy of relapsing from all of this ongoing stress,” she continued.
She says she won’t be bullied.
“I have another hearing I am going to apply for,” she told Daily Hive.
The next chapter
Tensions between McConville and her neighbours failed to cease, and Sahota said the upstairs neighbours “didn’t want to deal with [the situation] anymore and just picked up and left.”
The abrupt departure of the upstairs tenants and changes to her personal circumstances mean that Sahota is having to move into the suite above McConville herself. She said she is “absolutely terrified.”
“I have no idea what she’s capable of at the end of the day, but if her actions are any indication, it shouldn’t be something that’s too far from my mind.”
Sahota, who is not a part of the Sahota family that owns multiple buildings in the Downtown Eastside, says the lack of help from the systems in place to protect landlords and tenants made her wonder what it would take for someone to be charged in a situation like this.
“It’s easy for landlords to be villainized. I understand it. There’s a housing crisis, and there’s a lot of really, really poor landlords out there. But not everyone is out there to make somebody’s life miserable,” said Sahota.
“We also shouldn’t be subjected to hate speech or to racial slurs or discrimination.”
She emphasized that more laws need to be passed to protect landlords when they encounter situations involving problematic tenants that could endanger a landlord’s or other tenants’ safety.
The Minister of Housing, Ravi Kahlon, shared a statement regarding the situation, condemning the comments Sahota is facing.
“My heart breaks to hear about the difficulties this person is having as a landlord, plain and simple – racism is unacceptable and has no place in British Columbia,” the statement reads.
“We won’t stop until racism has not a single place left to hide in BC. Just last week, we announced new supports for people who play by the rules by allowing for more flexibility in addressing cases where there is a problematic tenancy and prescribing clear guidelines for ending tenancy with justified cause.”
At the beginning of April, the BC Government announced more protections for renters and landlords are being introduced.
Amendments are being made to the Residential Tenancy Act that will include a “web portal to generate a notice to evict a tenant for personal use.” For renters, this is supposed to deter bad-faith evictions from landlords. For landlords, this is supposed to provide a standardized process for serving notice.
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