Feces, urine, mould: After 1-year eviction fight, Hamilton landlord gets back home needing $100K in fixes

The small, tidy Hamilton bungalow where Verica Grgic once raised her kids is destroyed.  

The hardwood floors are coated with dog feces, with some of the excrement growing mould in the kitchen. The living room is strewn with belongings and garbage, dog toys and a mangled cat stand. The front wall and window are sprayed and streaked with what looks like blood. A pungent ammonia-like odour permeates the home.

Grgic and her husband, Marinko Vrbanic, showed CBC Hamilton the state of their Stoney Creek house a day after they got permission from Ontario's Landlord and Tenant Board (LTB) to evict the tenant for not paying over $24,000 in rent. 

It was an order Grgic had been attempting to get for a full year. She served the tenant an N4 notice in early 2024, applied to the LTB that March and was granted the eviction order in July, but then had to wait until last week to finally be allowed to change the locks.

"I'm not exaggerating — this was the worst year of my life," said Grgic. "I am so disgusted. I would never believe this is the real system, but I learned the reality."

Grgic said a contractor has determined the drywall, flooring and subflooring, and appliances will all need to be replaced, in part to get rid of the smell, exceeding an estimated $100,000.

The tenant did not respond to multiple phone calls, texts, social media messages or emails to her personally or to her business requesting a comment before and after she was evicted last week. CBC Hamilton also reached out to the Advocacy Centre for Tenants Ontario (ACTO). 

Douglas Kwan, ACTO's advocacy and legal services director, said generally speaking, it's outside the norm for tenants to not pay rent. He declined to comment on this specific case. 

For Grgic, 47, the experience has cost her more than money. 

She immigrated to Canada from Croatia as a single parent of two and worked long hours as a personal support worker. She bought the bungalow 14 years ago on her own. When she and Vrbanic, 59, got married last year, they decided to live in his place and rent out hers.

"It's actually more of a sentimental value than money," he said. 

After the tenant applied to rent it, her references checked out, Vrbanic said, although they didn't look at her credit history or request the LTB provide any past decisions involving her. She paid first and last month's rent in November 2023. But from there, the situation unravelled, rent went unpaid and Grgic said she watched her home being "destroyed."  

Vrbanic later discovered on the website Openroom — a crowdsourced online database of orders — that the tenant had been evicted in 2020 and 2022 from two other Hamilton homes for not paying rent. In each case, she owed the landlords more than $15,000, according to those LTB decisions.

Small landlords across Ontario have told CBC News in recent years they've fallen victim to tenants who know how to use the LTB to their advantage. Landlords say these tenants intentionally drag out proceedings for months while not paying rent and, in some cases, destroy property.