Oh, The Things That Can Happen In A Year...

At this same time last year, I was the victim of a rental scam. I was but an inexperienced 21-year-old college student from South of the Border with virtually no credit history or knowledge of Ontario rental law. The woman who scammed me knew all of this and used it to take full advantage of me.

It was one of the most surreal experiences of my entire life, and I've seen my fair share of things during my brief time on this earth. And being that we are currently living in surreal times and that coincidentally the first anniversary of the scam is approaching, I felt it finally apt to share my experience.

In March 2019, I was almost finished with my second semester at Humber College when the events in question unfolded. I had been living in Toronto for six months at the time and was frantically searching for a calm oasis away from the overbearing, ill-tempered homeowner whom I paid rent to for an upstairs bedroom in her house.

The woman blatantly accused me of stealing a bag of frozen shrimp one night a few months before, which sparked a fit of seething anger in me that I still cannot fully articulate. Flustered, I took to seemingly every classified internet site I could locate to find alternate accommodations. Then on February 28, 2019, almost out of the blue, I stumbled across what appeared to be the Holy Grail of all rental listings.

The rental was a room located in a two-bedroom shared bungalow. "Roomie" and I occupied the top floor while two tenants lived in the basement. I went in for a viewing on March 3 and was highly impressed with the house. After paying the "landlady" first and last month's rent, plus half of March, I moved in on the 15th. The amount totaled CAD$2,060.

Shortly before 11:30 am on March 24, the "landlady" came by the property and evicted me on the grounds of lying, gossiping and eating a bowl of cereal in my room. She verbally gave me thirty days to vacate. I had been living there for a week and two days at that time.

I called up my mother in a flurry of understandable rage to tell her what had just happened, but the "landlady" refused to speak to her. I remember yelling and storming out of the house, my mother still on the line. I walked to a nearby park with a visible view of the skyline and questioned why I decided to move up to Toronto in the first place. It felt as though the city tried everything in its power to drive me out, and that the CN Tower was just silently mocking me in the distance, flipping me off with its antenna. All of the events earlier in the day made sleep extremely difficult that night.

The next morning as I prepared to leave for school, the "landlady" called me and said that the two downstairs tenants had smelled gas. She told me that she was going to contact the gas company Enbridge and that they would need to inspect the rooms. That set my radar off, but I quickly dismissed the thought as I had to go to class. However, I ended up going back to the house soon after I got on campus as per my mother's advice to check on my belongings to make sure they hadn't been stolen.

Thankfully, my room was left intact. At that point, I decided to stay in the house just in case anyone did try to come around. About thirty minutes later, "roomie" handed me his phone to have me speak with our audibly distraught "landlady" on the other end.

Allegedly, she recently had a death in her family and was negotiating whether or not to sell the house and move back to her hometown of Montreal. She also stressed that she was evicting everyone, that she didn't want there to be any ill feelings between her and me and that the house wasn't safe on account of the supposed gas leak, which hadn't been verified by Enbridge. I knew something was fishy, but I just humored her and eventually hung up.

When I returned the phone to "roomie," he told me that he, too, had been given thirty days' notice to vacate and that he had nowhere to go on such short notice. Later that night, a friend of mine sent me a link to a Facebook post. Turns out "roomie" had listed his room for rent in an off-campus housing group. Intriguing.

The following morning, I stumbled across a Kijiji listing that my "landlady" had posted a few hours before in which she was seeking a door-to-door ride to Montreal. In other words, she was trying to leave Toronto without refunding me. Both my mother and grandmother spent the entire day negotiating with the "landlady," who only agreed to give me a partial refund of CAD$1,400. I moved my belongings out that night, received my partial refund, and moved in temporarily with a friend and his roommates.

I was already in contact with Humber Residence, which reached my name on a wait list for a suite-style room. I moved into Residence on March 30 and then into my current apartment on August 1.

So much can happen within a calendar year, from rental scams to global pandemics. I'm just glad that I came out unscathed on the other end and now have the opportunity to tell my story. I guess that's what makes this game called "life" so interesting.