My partner Jennifer and I have yet to buy our own home. We have been renting since we started dating four years ago. Jennifer is a nurse, and I have been in office work. However, as of late I have been staying home with Jennifer’s special needs daughter. We have a great yearly income, but have yet to pay off Jennifer’s debts completely and to save for a down payment. Therefor, for the past four years, we have been at the mercy of some pretty bizarre landlords.

Starting from the beginning, Jennifer had been living in a small 2 bedroom rental home at the beginning of our relationship. I believe she had been paying $850.00 plus utilities. We live in Northern Ontario, and that is very good pricing for a home, even back then. The landlord here was nothing out of the ordinary. Wanted her rent money on time, but made no repairs to things in the home (including mold). At one point, the basement flooded and the landlord had left the country for two weeks, leaving us with no way of getting a hold of her, therefor not being allowed to hire anyone to remove the water. We suffered severe water damage.

Jennifer ended up getting a job at the Mattawa General Hospital which moved us to Mattawa. We rented a larger 3 bedroom home in the country for 850.00 inclusive. These landlords were fine, and there were no problems with the rental home. However, after struggling with a medical issue, Jennifer had to be hospitalized for a few months which of course placed us in a situation where we had to move back to North Bay.

After being discharged, we moved into a small two bedroom apartment. The rent there was $1150 per month, which is still great for North Bay. We have college students competing for housing which makes it difficult to find great housing prices. There was a very gorgeous bathroom. The landlord expressed his interest in taking a bath with us. Lucky he was the landlord or I would have given him a black eye instead of laughing it off. The landlords elderly father lived in the unit attached to ours. After discovering we were a lesbian couple, he began to call us names I will not mention, in front of Jennifer’s at the time six year old daughter.We stayed for our one year lease and then moved on. This time, looking for another detached house to rent.