The same day CBC published a story about a Hintonburg property owner stuck with another man’s eight-year-old water bill, Meg Dolland got a letter from the city.
She had heard about Robert Haslett, who found out this year that he was on the hook for nearly $500 for water arrears and interest accrued by the previous owner, who died in 2019.
Now, it was Dolland’s turn.
Her letter asked her to pay $435 for just 10 days of water use, plus interest, dating back to March 2020 — just before she took possession of her house in Old Ottawa South.
“Five years is unreasonable,” Dolland said. “$400 from a bill for 10 days is unreasonable. Let’s be adults here and acknowledge this is unfair.”
In her view, it isn’t fair for the city to take so long to notify her about the charge, with interest building up day by day. The city charges interest at a rate of 0.0417 per cent daily, compounded every 15 days. Over five years, that could mean hundreds of dollars in added costs.
The previous owner of her home didn’t even live in the house, Dolland said. She called the situation “insane,” and said she would have acted quickly to pay the bill — had she known about it.
“It feels like an overstep, like a misuse of power,” she said.
‘You’ve got to be kidding me’
Dolland is only one of several people who reached out to CBC with stories about water arrears left by a previous owner coming back to haunt them years after the fact.
John Dathan is another, and the arrears for his Westboro home date back even further. The city is asking him to cover arrears for a two-week period in the summer of 2017. With interest, the total has reached $369.
“My first call was to the city to say, ‘You’ve got to be kidding me,’ because I just didn’t understand how I was responsible for this in any way, shape or form,” Dathan said.
“Why wouldn’t they have reached out to me earlier about that?” he asked.
The city told Dathan that it had tried to reach the previous owner and collect the balance from them, without success. But Dathan told CBC that the previous owner of his home was a construction company. He said his wife found the builder online in seconds.
“The whole thing feels odd,” he said. “Why, all of a sudden after seven years, is this coming up?”
A ‘perplexing’ problem
Ann Marcil received her letter last Monday. The arrears date back to 2018, shortly before she bought her home in Orléans. In the years since, less than a month worth of arrears has climbed to $576.
“Why did it take seven years to get this to us?” Marcil asked. “And why are we responsible for water payments in a time where we didn’t even own the house?”
The city told CBC that water arrears attach to the property, not the individual. They cannot simply be written off, as per provincial regulations. The city said it “makes every effort” to collect from the previous owner before charging the bill to the new owner, but that can take years.
But Marcil said it would have been easy to track the previous owner down. In her case, it was an occupant, not a builder. She said she gladly would have helped the city find them, had it asked.
“It’s really perplexing,” she said. “I could have given them information about the previous owner. I have that information, so I think that they’ve really dropped the ball.”
Dana Thibeault got her letter early this month. It included the same familiar line: “This notice is to advise you that there was an outstanding water and sewer account for the property from a previous owner.”
In her case, the arrears covered about two months in 2017. They have now reached $534.33.
Unlike Haslett and many of the other residents, Thibeault has managed to pry an important detail out of the city: She told CBC she learned the original sum of the arrears was about $213. The rest, it appears, is interest.
“At first, I was really upset,” she said. “How can this go on for eight years?”
She’s still frustrated that the city didn’t let her know more promptly that there were outstanding charges.
“It would have saved everybody a lot of work and would have saved us going through our insurance to pay for this interest,” she said.
The city is advising residents stuck with a previous owner’s arrears to do precisely that, saying title insurance will generally cover the charges.
Not a blitz, city says
CBC asked if the recent wave of letters represent a water bill blitz, and the city replied it does not.
“The City of Ottawa is not conducting a targeted campaign to collect on water arrears,” said Joseph Muhuni, the city’s deputy treasurer for revenue.
“Rather these notices are part of the City’s established collection processes and procedures, which includes routine account reviews.”
Muhuni said he understands that the bills can be unexpected and cause distress. He encouraged homebuyers to work with their lawyers to obtain certificates that can identify outstanding water charges.
However, real estate lawyer Rita Asangarani has previously told CBC that those certificates are not foolproof and sometimes miss charges from immediately before a sale.
Muhuni said residents with questions about their water bills can call 613-580-2444 or email [email protected].
