Renters frantic after promised repairs never materialized on Langley City home<\/p>\n
Published 5:05 am Monday, May 11, 2026<\/p>\n
When Tanya McCracken and Kelly Neufeld toured the Langley City rental house at the end of March, they noticed several issues with the building.<\/p>\n
The couple made a list of things that needed fixing before their move in a month later, including rotten boards on the front porch, a hot water tap that didn\u2019t work, and broken light switches.<\/p>\n
The couple were in touch with a property manager and the landlord, and they say they were assured that the problems would be fixed by the time their lease started on May 1. The couple offered to have family do the work \u2013 they are related to electricians and plumbers \u2013 but were told that wasn\u2019t necessary.<\/p>\n
However, when they transferred their first month\u2019s rent and walked in on May 1, they found very little had changed.<\/p>\n
\u201cThat\u2019s sort of when the panic started setting in,\u201d said Neufeld.<\/p>\n
The home, just off 53 Avenue and 200 Street in the area near Brydon Lagoon, is a typical older two-storey structure. But inside, the problems are glaring.<\/p>\n
The home has no smoke alarms. There are two missing interior doors, and two more with broken or missing doorknobs. Several light switches don\u2019t work, and there is no functioning light in the workshop-style shed.<\/p>\n
The home\u2019s water heater puts out scalding water, so hot it immediately steams up a room. The back deck appears to be propped up with a pair of long two-by-fours braced underneath it. There are ventilation holes in outer walls, some of which go nowhere \u2013 one leads directly into the back of a kitchen cabinet, and you can see outside when the cabinet door is open.<\/p>\n
Wires protrude from one wall. Wood around the back door is visibly crumbling. A dishwasher they had noted as in need of replacement was replaced, with a unit that appears to date from the 1980s.<\/p>\n
There is no railing on the stairway, which concerns McCracken, who is scheduled to have knee surgery soon.<\/p>\n
After the tenants complained to their landlord, a workman appeared a few days after they had moved in, with a replacement door. He looked around at the problems, said sympathetic things, but left without fixing anything, McCracken and Neufeld said. The door door was not installed, because it did not fit, according to the landlord.<\/p>\n
Neufeld and McCracken are appealing to the Residential Tenancy Branch, which deals with disputes between landlords and tenants, and they\u2019re also considering moving all over again. That would be a major financial hit since they just paid for all their moving costs.<\/p>\n
The house has clearly seen better days, with walls that aren\u2019t flush with ceilings, uneven floors, chipped tiles, missing moldings and unpainted drywall in places.<\/p>\n
\u201cCosmetic stuff isn\u2019t our main issue,\u201d said Neufeld.<\/p>\n
She and McCracken said they\u2019re worried about safety. Three of their four children are currently living with other relatives while they figure out their next move.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe don\u2019t feel they\u2019re safe to be here,\u201d said Neufeld.<\/p>\n
\u201cI have a dog and I can\u2019t even bring him here,\u201d McCracken said.<\/p>\n
Landlord Russell Kent said that he had hired someone to do work on the home in April, but it didn\u2019t get done.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s not my problem,\u201d Kent said about his tenant\u2019s concerns. \u201cThe realtor rented it to them, and if they don\u2019t like it, they can move out.\u201d<\/p>\n
Asked about some of the specific problems, including the absence of smoke alarms, he said things would be fixed.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019m going to get it up to date, for sure,\u201d Kent said. He said that a workman would be coming the week of May 14.<\/p>\n
\u201cIf they want to be patient with me, I\u2019ll get it it done for them,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Renters frantic after promised repairs never materialized on Langley City home Published 5:05 am Monday, May 11, 2026…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":662291,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[194299],"tags":[903,49,48,87674],"class_list":["post-662290","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-surrey","tag-british-columbia","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-surrey"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/662290","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=662290"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/662290\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/662291"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=662290"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=662290"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=662290"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}