Hello everyone welcome to our webinar.
Today, we're going to be having a great
conversation around understanding your
lease and The Residential Tenancies Act.
So there's a lot of words in that title
but don't be frightened.
We are going to kind of break down everything for you
today and hopefully you'll walk away
with some helpful tips for when you come
here as a student and you're renting a
space and you have a really good idea of
what your lease is and how to read the
Residential Tenancies Act and how to
know what your rights are so that's the
whole point of today's webinar.
My name is Giordano Modesto.
I'm a Community Legal Worker from Waterloo Region Community Legal Services.
Not a Lawyer not a Paralegal not a Social Worker
or so just a guy who knows what he's
talking about but I work with Lawyers and Paralegals
and be supervised everything I do that's
why I can do what I do.
And course my name is Janelle Vermeer. I
work at Conestoga College at the
International Office. I work as a
Transition Coordinator there and I
really look forward to meeting you all
because it's my job to help you in
regards to anything transition and
essentially just to help you get set up
on the right foot here as a student and
in Canada.
So the first thing we'll we need to get out of the way which is never a fun thing right
essentially it's what Giordano said at the beginning is that
we know we're not lawyers this isn't legal
advice but we just kind of are
presenting basic legal information to
you and if you have any questions about
this you can contact us but specific
advice has to come from a legal
professional and more information about
that will be presented at the end of our webinar.
So the first thing we're talking about today is your lease and
understanding what really is a lease so
essentially it's a legal agreement
between you and a landlord when you rent
home, an apartment, a room in a house or
any form of residence.
Your lease will contain matters know such as
your name and contact information
it's just sort of any identification information about you like that.
How long the lease is? rent details so
how much essentially when you are
required to pay the rent in the month,
how the payment is made? the date
signatures so on and so forth.
You may have also heard that a lease is called
different things by different people
sometimes,
a rental agreement or a tenancy agreement those are
different things you can hear.
I think as of 2018,
there was a standard form of lease that
was instituted by the Government of Ontario.
So landlords are required to use this
standard form of lease it's actually
very easy to find. If you go to Google
and you type in Ontario standard form of
least it actually is one of the first
documents that pop right up and on this
webinar here there is a website and
there's a guide to this lease that you
can find and it's actually available in
multiple different languages including Hindi, Gujarati, Punjabi, Spanish, Chinese etc.
So you can definitely look at that guide on
your own time and take a look in your
native tongue as well if you want to
read it in that so you can get a really
good understanding of what the standard
form of lease entails.
So we'll chat about why this lease document
this tenancy agreement stuff that we're chatting
about is really that important and it is
hey yes we've encountered situations
where there have been issues with not
having a lease and or having a lease
that wasn't you know signed or a lease
that wasn't clear and it just really is
important to have something in writing
when coming into a
legal contract between two people.
So sometimes when a
student is rushing to find a unit you
know it might be something that they
don't think about as needing the lease
especially if the landlord doesn't say
that they need it but it really is
important to have that to protect you as
well as to protect the landlord as well.
So I think that what's really important
when talking to a landlord about a lease
let's say you feel the landlord feels
comfortable with you let's say you're
from the same country of origin and they
say hey you know let's just help
each other out I'll give you this
rent and you can move in tomorrow that
sounds great and a wonderful deal but
really at the end of the day there might
be issues down the road so here's an
example of something you might want to
say to the landlord in that
situation so you would just express-
Hi I'm really new to the country and I
just want to make sure that I'm doing
everything correctly. I've learned from
Conestoga that a lease is important so
hopefully you don't mind providing
something in writing for me. There's a
standard form of lease that you are to
use online so it'll be really easy for
you to print and we can go through it
together and I feel like that would come
across not as rude especially when
you're just saying I'm new I just want
to do things right and that will help
them get on the right track too is being a
landlord and I think that all parties
would appreciate that.
One other thing you want to do is to read the lease very carefully.
It's important to know what
you're signing, it's important to know what
you're getting into so don't agree to
anything that you don't understand.
I know that it might be difficult there's
gonna be so many new things you learn
about being a student in Canada and some
of which you might not understand right
away which is understandable on our end
right so please if you're having trouble
understanding the lease take time to
learn about it there's a lot of really
helpful resources that you can find out
there that we can provide for you.
You can contact the legal assistance that's
available to you here at Conestoga or
you can contact the International Office
as well.
It's just important to know
exactly what you're agreeing to so feel
free to contact us if there's something
that's confusing for you.
