Kristin Gaddie says she's worried she will be evicted from her apartment due to her pregnancy.

(ASHLEY LEGASSIC - REPORTER / iNFOnews.ca)

KAMLOOPS - Kristin Gaddie and her fiancé Zach Wolfer are due to welcome their first baby this July. And when they bring their little bundle of joy home, they may be breaking their lease agreement and could be evicted.

The couple have already been advised of potential consequences in a letter from their landlord. Gaddie says just before Good Friday she went to pay her rent and shared her news.

“I was like ‘oh, we’re expecting a child,’ and she’s like ‘oh so are you moving out?’ I was like ‘no, why would we move out?’” Gaddie alleges. “I was devastated, like absolutely shocked.”

The couple have lived in their Sahali apartment unit for roughly a year, but Gaddie has lived in the building for seven. Their lease specifically stipulates two adults and no children live in the apartment and potential consequences were spelled out in the letter.

“We understand that you will be bringing in another person into your unit without permission from manager,” a May 1 letter to Gaddie states. “Your lease agreement clearly states in lease rules (1) only those persons on the lease are aloud (sic) to be in the unit which in your case is 2 persons, this will be a breach of your leases (sic) agreement:

You did not get any kind of written permission from manager before the third person was to move in. Therefore this will be a cause for eviction.”

When iNFOnews.ca contacted the landlord, a woman named Darlene identified herself as a property manager for owners of Sun City Court, but refused to give her last name.

She says the issue isn’t the pending birth, it’s the lease agreement.

“It has nothing to do with her being pregnant,” Darlene says, adding that there is at least one child who currently lives in the building.

Darlene said all she wanted from Gaddie was a written letter, asking permission for another person to live in their unit. She said she would never discriminate against a pregnant woman.

While Gaddie says she doesn’t recall ever getting that request, her lawyer has since advised her to not concede the requirement to seek a landlord’s permission to have a baby. 

Gaddie has filed a complaint with the B.C. Human Rights Tribunal but it’s not entirely clear who is in the right.

According to the Residential Tenancy Act and B.C.’s Human Rights Code, a landlord cannot refuse to rent to someone because of their marital or family status, or because they are pregnant or have children.

But whether you can evict someone due to their pregnancy or family status isn’t certain.

Andrew Sakamoto with the Tenant Resource and Advisory Centre of B.C. says situations like this are rare, and usually settled before arbitration leaving no real direction from arbitrators and therefore unpredictable.

“It really is a tricky one,” Sakamoto says.

He adds that both sides could likely make a compelling argument. A landlord could argue that a lease clearly states how many occupants are allowed in a unit, while a tenant could argue that it’s unconscionable for a landlord to evict a tenant for having a baby, Sakamoto says.

Meanwhile, in a tight rental market with few certainties, Gaddie and Wolfer will be counting down the days to mid-July when their baby comes home and not knowing for certain where that home will be.

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