Being thrown out of your lodgings is a tough thing to deal with, and one woman is seeking Slave Lake Town council’s help in the matter of her eviction. But council may not be able to do anything for her.
The woman – who didn’t give her name – appeared before council at its June 1 meeting. She told council she had been shabbily treated in being evicted (although she hadn’t yet moved out) from her Slave Lake Housing Authority (SLHA) subsidized rental unit. She also said she felt her eviction appeal hearing was unfair.
“I felt it was a set-up,” she said. “Nobody was listening.”
The tenant told council that she had received an eviction notice for unpaid rent and that she was due to be out of her unit on May 24. On that day she came up with the money and phoned the authority office.
It was Victoria Day, but SLHA manager Gerry Maloney answered the phone. She said she wanted to pay the rent.
“He said, 'We’re closed. Come see my assistant tomorrow.’”
So she did, and ended up seeing Maloney. He told her it was too late.
“You’re history,” she told council that the chief administrative officer told her, “Get out.”
She said she asked for an appeal hearing on the spot, and got one on the same day.
“I asked for more time. He said ‘no.’”
The hastily convened appeal panel – made up of SLHA board members, denied her appeal. She told council she thinks the housing authority did not follow due process in her case.
“It’s not the first time this has happened to me,” she said.
Mayor Ray Stern was quick to put things in perspective. Town council doesn’t control the housing authority, he told the woman, but it does have a member (Lisa Brown) on the SLRHA board.
“We will ask our board member to follow up,” he told the disgruntled tenant.
According to information from the housing authority, tenants are allowed three eviction notices per year. If they come up with their rent by the eviction date, the notice is withdrawn. The fourth notice is final, but there is a chance of appeal.
But the tenant, in a subsequent interview with The Leader, denied that it was her fourth eviction notice in the year. It was her second, she says, and she had the money and was ready to pay it on the 24th and also the 25th. Nor has she ever received a ‘final’ eviction notice in any other of the 24 years she has lived in the unit, she said.
“There would have only been one (eviction notice) if they had taken my money. He (Maloney) wanted me out.”
Rent delinquency is apparently not uncommon with SLRHA tenants.
“There’s not a month that we don’t deliver an eviction notice,” says new CAO Jennifer McMann.
Facing eviction, many tenants will finally come up with the rent.
“They know this four-strike system and they use it to their advantage.”
Tenants who are evicted are ineligible for further tenancy with the authority until they pay up whatever back rent they owe. Even then they have to wait a year before getting back on the list.
“Quite a few people come back because they have no place to go,” said McMann.

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