旧アパートの私たちの部屋にまた泥棒!!! & ビザの話。カナダ生活 ウィニペグ

Using a throwaway for identification purposes.

I moved into a beautiful new apartment in a great neighbourhood in December. It’s a basement suite, but it’s nice and spacious and reasonably priced. I’ve lived in a lot of basement suites so I didn’t feel too worried about my safety even though I’m a young woman living alone. I just take the pains to make sure my blinds are closed when I’m home.

I came home from work last night to find that my apartment was broken into. My apartment has two doors: one from the hallway and one that’s direct-access from the outside, so right off the parking lot. The robbers hacked out my deadbolt with some sort of tool and broke in that way. The door is just an old wooden one. Luckily, my most valuable possessions like my electronics and sensitive personal information were found in a pillowcase near the door, left behind. However, about $1500 worth of posessions are gone, and none have serial numbers besides Beats headphones I don’t have a receipt for. Naturally, I don’t have tenant’s insurance because I’m an idiot that thought it would never happen to me.

In talking with the police and my caretaker, it turned out that the building had only one break-in before… in November… to what’s now my apartment. It makes sense now why the previous tenant’s lease was ending in November. I would’ve moved in 3 weeks after their break-in. The previous tenants had a lot of cash stolen, so the police suspect it’s the same person who came back for more cash without realizing that there was a new tenant.

My door has been “fixed” with a metal plate around the lock which could easily be unscrewed. You can see the damage to the wood around the plate which would make prying it off again very easy. The realty company says they will be adding security cameras to the premises.

I’ve done some reading in the Manitoba Tenancy Act, and there’s nothing about breaking a lease because of safety concerns (besides safety concerns pertaining to domestic violence). I can try to go through a claims process to get my landlord to pay for some of my lost property, but I’m not totally sure the extent to which I can prove it was their fault.

I’m not expecting a bunch of tenancy law lawyers to appear out of nowhere, but if anyone with similar experiences or some insight into this area could provide some help/guidance, I’d really appreciate it. My questions are:

– Do I have any options to leave the lease without penalty?

– Would the claims process be worthwhile? (The door is really just a shitty wooden thing, and I’ve complained about the lock before because it was sticky. I didn’t like going through that door because the lock was unreliable and I didn’t want to be caught with my back to the parking lot and back alley, unable to get into my own apartment at night.)

– Do landlords have an obligation to disclose previous break-ins within a certain time period? I was asked if I wanted renter’s insurance and said no (big regrets) and it was left at that.

– Am I overreacting for wanting to relocate?

– What other reasonable demands should I be making of my landlord? A real door?

Tl;dr my apartment was broken into and about $1500 of stuff was taken. I found out that weeks prior to me moving in, the apartment was broken into and the previous tenants suffered a lot of losses. Looking for options/advice/supportive memes. Also looking for renter’s insurance recommendations going forward because RIP me.