At some point common sense must trump rigid bureaucrats and their blind obedience to the rules.

That point won’t be today for landlord Jason Rivero who rented an apartment to, unknown to him, a convicted killer in November 2018.

Alexander Tanasescu did not disclose his manslaughter conviction to Jason Rivero when he rent Rivero’s apartment.

On January 10, 2020, Tanasescu trashed the rental apartment and, after a six-hour standoff with police, was arrested and taken to jail, where he remains incarcerated today.

With Tanasescu in jail, Jason Rivero applied to end Tanasescu’s six-month rental agreement early so he could repair the destroyed apartment and rent it out.

British Columbia’s Residential Tenancy Branch decided against Rivero because Rivero did not personally notify Tanasescu as is required by the Residential Tenancy Act.

“This person killed somebody in jail. He threatened me and my family.… After what I told them, after all the pitfalls, they decided I couldn’t end the tenancy because I couldn’t serve the required documents personally to Mr. Tanasescu who was in jail and unreachable.”

This bureaucratic mindset completely baffled and frustrated Mr. Rivero.

“I want people to know how bureaucrats act in situations like this. There is no criteria for these people. They are robots. They might as well substitute them with a computer program.”

When the bureaucrats at the Residential Tenancy Branch can’t find an ounce of common sense in the entire building, B.C. landlords clearly have the deck stacked against them.

 

Tanasescu’s History of Violence

Alexander Dinu Tanasescu pleaded guilty to beating Blair Thomas Cody to death inside Fraser Regional Correctional Centre in 2010. He was sentenced to nine years in prison. With credit for the time he was incarcerated before trial, Tanasescu was sentenced to six years, five months and 21 days.

In November 2017 his statutory release (after serving two-thirds of his sentence) was revoked after a series of drug offences, a cocaine overdose, and assaulting a prison guard.

In November 2019 Tanasescu was convicted of threatening a prison guard while serving his sentence for killing Blair Cody.