Toronto duo allegedly received an eviction note for air quality, then started a GoFundMe claiming it’s just bodily functions: ‘We wish we were joking’
‘This is not a joke.’
A Toronto comedy and theatre duo says their landlord wants them out after an air quality monitor kept showing spikes that the pair blame on their own flatulence. According to IBTimes, they launched a GoFundMe to fund a tenant lawyer.
The pair performs as Creepy Boys and rents the ground floor and lower level of a converted duplex, with their landlord living upstairs. They say one duct system links the two homes. On the fundraiser, they write, “We are being wrongfully evicted because we fart too much.” They add, “This is not a joke. We wish we were joking.”
Their account says the trouble began when the landlord told them a device in her apartment kept flagging spikes in volatile organic compounds, known as VOCs. They say they helped hunt for the source. They skipped home cooking for days, showered at a gym and entered their unit with no lights or appliances on. The spikes still came, they claim, especially overnight.
An eviction notice followed the inspection
They deny smoking indoors. One of them sometimes smokes cannabis outside, a legal activity in Canada, they say. They asked her to hire an outside air expert. She refused over the cost, they claim, unless they agreed to cover the bill if they proved to be the cause.
Then they read the monitor maker’s FAQ. They quote it as stating that the sensor reacts to “the build-up of breath and results of other bodily functions in the room during the night.” They also say a health specialist with the city replied, “People drive themselves crazy looking for a source, when the source is in fact them.”
The landlord later accused them of using a wax diffuser, they say. They describe the object as a clown-shaped ceramic candle holder. Their lease does not ban candles or diffusers, they claim, but they offered to give them up. Housing fights can go viral, as with a Canadian landlord-tenant barbecue dispute.
About three weeks after an inspection where they raised maintenance problems, they say they were served an N12 notice. It says the landlord plans to use the unit herself and turn the house back into one family home. They call the notice an act of bad faith that followed their push to enforce tenant rights. A landlord’s plans for a unit have sparked viral fights before, including a Nevada landlord’s alleged plan to house a stranger.
The case is now before Ontario’s Landlord and Tenant Board. The latest fundraiser update says the board has not issued a decision after the hearing, and their lawyer expects a wait of several weeks to roughly two months. The pair says moving to a comparable home would add CAD 800 to CAD 1,000 a month, partly because they store props, puppets and a two-person horse costume.
The fundraiser first aimed for CAD 2,800 and, they say, covered the lawyer’s fee within a day. It had reached CAD 3,400 from 36 donations at the time of the report. Health Canada states that VOCs “form a large group of chemicals commonly found in both indoor and outdoor air.” Its list of indoor sources includes “cooking, especially frying,” “cigarette smoke” and “candles and incense.” It adds that for most VOCs, levels in Canadian homes “do not usually pose a significant health risk.”
Tribunals Ontario lists the N12 as a “Notice to End your Tenancy Because the Landlord, a Purchaser or a Family Member Requires the Rental Unit.” The N5 is a separate notice for “Interfering with Others, Damage or Overcrowding.” The site also lists a tenant application called “Landlord Gave a Notice of Termination in Bad Faith.”
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