Tenants of Halifax mobile home park set water meter precedent across Nova Scotia

Haley Ryan · CBC News

· Posted: Jun 27, 2025 5:00 AM EDT | Last Updated: June 27

People surviving successful mobile location parks astir Nova Scotia could beryllium eligible for thousands of dollars successful retroactive h2o measure payments following a "big win" successful tribunal for Halifax-area tenants.

A Supreme Court of Nova Scotia determination this period upheld an earlier tiny claims tribunal ruling that recovered billing tenants for h2o done h2o meters was ever unreasonable, and awarded retroactive compensation to 2 residents who had been billed for years.

The tenants, Eloise Graves and Nicole Herd of Woodbine Park successful Beaver Bank, N.S., said it was a pugnacious "David and Goliath powerfulness dynamic" to spell up against their landlord. 

But some women said enactment from chap tenants kept them going, and they're arrogant of the effect mounting a provincewide precedent.

"This wasn't astir money. This was astir making it fair," said Graves, who volition person astir $1,700 for the metre interest and retroactive bills since 2021.

"It feels awesome. But connected the different hand, we benignant of [don't] judge it. It's benignant of a weird feeling," said Herd, who volition get astir $2,511 for her bills dating to 2019.

Since 2015, the Woodbine landlord charged residents to instal meters connected homes sold successful the park, starring to a tiered strategy wherever immoderate residents paid for h2o and immoderate did not. The meters way however overmuch h2o a household uses, and those customers are billed each fewer months. 

Utilities similar h2o are usually included successful batch fees for parkland residents successful Nova Scotia. They are among the operating expenses that landlords tin mention erstwhile they reason for rent increases.

Landlords of mobile location parks, officially called land-lease communities, were directed by the provincial Residential Tenancies Program to halt installing h2o meters connected homes successful 2023.

But the argumentation excluded tenants who already had meters. Graves and Herd were among the astir 300 of Woodbine's 630 homeowners who had meters and continued to get h2o bills. 

Both women took their lawsuit to tiny claims tribunal and won successful September 2024. But landlord Westphal Court Ltd. appealed, bringing the substance earlier the Nova Scotia Supreme Court.

Westphal's lawyer argued the 2023 argumentation was legally binding and should exclude anyone with h2o meters from compensation. But successful her June 9 decision, Justice Mona Lynch said some the tiny claims adjudicator and residential tenancies had recovered h2o metering an unreasonable rule.

"It is not tenable for that unreasonable regularisation to proceed to use to the respondents," Lynch said.

Nora MacIntosh, a Nova Scotia Legal Aid lawyer, represented Graves and Herd astatine tiny claims court.

"We don't often get large wins for tenants. So yeah, this is simply a large win," MacIntosh said.

"It provides economical justness to the tenants of land-lease communities, and it deters exploitative practices by landlords."

It's unclear however galore radical could payment from the decision, but MacIntosh said it is apt hundreds if not thousands of tenants successful the province.

Service Nova Scotia could not archer CBC News however galore land-lease communities are operating successful Nova Scotia or however galore are utilizing h2o meters.

There are astir 30 of these communities with astir 4,000 homes successful the Halifax municipality alone. Westphal Court Ltd. owns six parks, including Woodbine, with a full of astir 1,600 homes. 

Susan McKeage, a spokesperson for Service Nova Scotia, said Lynch's ruling was a "positive decision" for the Woodbine tenants, and the h2o metre argumentation has present been revised to see tenants with existing meters connected their homes.

McKeage said eligible tenants tin interaction the Residential Tenancies Program to record for their idiosyncratic compensation.

Woodbine tenant Erin McInnis was 1 of 91 mobile parkland residents who filed with Service Nova Scotia last twelvemonth looking for that compensation. Most of those cases person been connected clasp pending the effect of the Supreme Court case.

McInnis has had a h2o metre since 2017 erstwhile she moved in, and estimates she mightiness beryllium eligible for astir $5,000 successful h2o bills.

"It's beauteous exciting. Yeah, I'm looking guardant to that wealth back," McInnis said. "Who doesn't request $5,000 successful this economy?"

But due to the fact that the residential tenancy process tin instrumentality truthful long, particularly with perchance hundreds of radical filing claims, MacIntosh said landlords should proactively wage backmost immoderate tenants they've been "improperly charging" for h2o services.

It appears astatine slightest 1 landlord volition instrumentality that approach.

In a missive to tenants connected Tuesday, Westphal Court president Heather Scott said they were instantly stopping their signifier of charging for h2o and sewer services successful "standalone amounts" in light of the Supreme Court decision.

Residents with h2o meters looking for compensation tin nonstop a petition successful penning to Westphal directly, Scott said, and "we are prepared to enactment with you to resoluteness specified a claim." They volition besides enactment with anyone who has already filed a assertion with residential tenancies, Scott said.

"We spot that this process volition beryllium to beryllium preferable to each parties arsenic compared to adjudication," Scott said.

McInnis is besides caput of the Woodbine Community Non-Profit Society, which has been raising concerns astir h2o meters and different issues successful Nova Scotia parks for the past fewer years.

She echoed Graves and Herd's comments that having tenants speech to each different and instrumentality enactment successful larger groups has been cardinal to making progress.

"When it's conscionable 1 oregon 2 people, that's however things autumn betwixt the cracks. But erstwhile we travel together, we're a force," McInnis said.

McInnis said they precocious launched the Land Lease Residents of Nova Scotia Non-Profit Society that volition person a provincewide presumption connected larger issues, with Woodbine and different parks forming subcommittees.

She said they person heard from land-lease tenants crossed Nova Scotia who person said h2o meters are being utilized successful "lots of places" astir the province.