Turkey84

all messages by user

2/10/2015
Topic: Utilities Dispute

Turkey84

I'm having a bit of an issue with my landlord and the water/garbage bill.

In Toronto, the fees for water and garbage are added to the properties owners taxes every four months, as I understand.

We moved into this residence in March 2012. Part of the lease stipulated that we were to pay for the water/garbage bill. Fair enough.

We never received a bill. We called the city to see if we could switch the name on the account and they said it was not possible. We never received a bill from the landlord in the almost three years we've been here until this week.

Now, the landlord is asking that we pay this bill going forward. Now, even though it's in the lease (which expired March 2013, so we're on "month to month" now) we haven't had to pay this expense in two years. Now suddenly we're expected to pay it. This feels like a "bait and switch" to me. It's effectively raised my living expenses by $750 a year.

My questions are:

Will I be obligated to pay for the garbage/water back payments?
Is the addition of the water/garbage bill to our fees legal considering that we were not billed for it for the past two years?

As an aside, we've been financially planning (accepting debt and taking jobs that pay less so I can spend more time with my family) based on cost of living we'd been experiencing. The added costs are going to be very difficult to absorb.