So my old landlord, K, was in when we signed the lease. It says no pets but he OKed our two indoor cats twice verbally (this was the main reason we chose to live here), we have two witnesses to it too. So K got fired on the 1st and along comes D. He stops by on the 10th or so and drops off his card, we also show him our broken toilet, leaking ceiling (note the day it was posted), and broken blinds (which had rotted off). He picks up the blinds then says he'll be back soon, okay cool.
Fast forward to yesterday he stops by to "fix our problems" and mentions that we are violating our lease with pets and says it's either get rid of the cats right now or we're getting going to receive an eviction notice on the 28th of January. Um what? We chose our cats, D himself looked shocked and asked us again and we tell him the same thing. He's all "Um, alright." and leaves. We check over the apartment and no changes have been made, no blinds, warped ceiling which is now turning brown and has a hole, and our toilet is still broken.
Today he drops off a warning saying the cats have caused excessive damage to the apartment. We called him up and ask him what the damage was, and he flat out tells us there is no actual damage done by the cats. It's the smell when he came over, sure no problem he caught us off guard and we’re busy young adults, cleaning isn’t our favourite thing to do. So we spent the same day cleaning the entire apartment, which now looks and smells wonderful so we decide to call him up and he changes his story now saying no pets because the owner is allergic to cats. We've seen the owner once in the two years he's lived there and he never said anything then. Continuing talking with him he says everyone else has paid a pet deposit and we’re the only ones who haven’t. If the lease says no pets, why is there a pet deposit and why in our two years we were never notified, hmm?
Another thing to mention, in our small apartment complex there’s two dogs, birds on three of the four floors, another cat on the first floor and a lizard all owned by different tenants on different floors. So if he’s kicking us out because it says no pets in the lease, doesn’t he have to kick them out too?
And now when we call from our home phone D ignores our calls, we want another copy of our lease, no answer. Yet if we call him from another line he picks up, it's like he's constantly dodging our calls.
So now we called up the Residential Tenancy Branch of BC and we've picked up their form and are faxing it off tomorrow. Pretty confident we do have a good chance of winning this, we’re still keeping our eyes out for new places nearby.
And to add, in the two years of living there we have a perfect record. We've always handed in our rent early, never received a complaint, or held parties, we're responsible twenty year olds and he's pulling this bullshit.