it's easy to look at the vlogs and claim i had a perfect living arrangement and was stupid to screw it up, but that is wrong.

1) the unit was infested with bugs.
2) the building was full of second-hand smoke.
3) there was some kind of chemical leak - probably a natural gas leak - that was giving me migraines. i haven't had a migraine since i moved out of there.
4) the neighbourhood was infested with stray cats, who left piles of feces in the backyard.
5) the neighbours were continually chain smoking in the backyard, making it hard to keep the window open, to fight the a/c.
6) the building owners were constantly harassing me.
7) the neighbourhood was becoming increasingly dangerous, and at this point is flat out unsafe.
8) there was some kind of magnetic field in the neighbourhood that was disrupting my equipment.

the harassment was not minor; it ranged from leaving feces on my window sill (which i have video evidence of) to leaving cigarette butts at my front door to entering my unit when i was gone. the intent was clearly to try to get me to move out. i had no choice but to try and push back, but i could not have kept any money awarded to me as compensation (unless in the form of  rent reduction), so the attempt from the start was to try and change behaviour.

what do you do when the building you live in gets bought out by a pathological liar that is harassing you on a daily basis and wants you to move out? there's no good answer, it's just a terrible turn of events. your only real options are to either try and force the owners to sell by bankrupting them and/or sending them to jail, or to relent and move out. i initially picked the first option, then stepped back when they made what seemed like a legitimate step to change their behaviour - only to realize within days that it was simply another example of pathological dishonesty, and antisocial behaviour, indicating that there wasn't a solution besides bleeding them dry, and staying there would be a long slog of constant court battles - i was going to have to sue them over and over again until they had to sell.

i have argued in this space that the ruling against me (eviction for personal use) was incorrect, and i do believe that i would have won an appeal. i even suspect some corruption on the court, unfortunately. but, i was living in a roach-infested ashtray that was giving me headaches and had bad wiring that was interfering with my ability to record. i had a moment of clarity: staying there no longer felt worth fighting for.

i did not lose money on the move, in fact i gained last month's rent from the city, so i did not have any damages to recoup, but came out ahead by $700. they also covered moving costs. on the other hand, the process must have cost them between $5,000-$10,000.

so, i could have re-opened the harassment case after i moved, but i wouldn't have been able to benefit from it. on winning the case, i would have had to declare the money as income, and handed it back to the odsp office. so, why bother? i wanted to look forwards. the purpose of the case was to try and get them to stop the constant harassment intending to get me to move, or to bankrupt them if they wouldn't. once i had moved, the purpose became purely punitive, and it seemed like they had already been punished via the costs of hiring representation and appealing to the board. things were looking up; i had better things to do.

i did keep an eye on the unit to see if they were renting it, as that would give me a path to damages i could claim via rent reduction. it doesn't look like they did. i suspect they realized that the unit was not half as valuable as they thought, after all. who knows how much money they've sunk into it, trying to renovate it...

as we know, the living situation in the apartment was not good for me. but, the difficulties i had in the apartment do not negate the problems i had in the previous basement, which were a consequence of a number of changes: installing the gas furnace seems to have created leaks that gave me headaches and broke the electrical wiring, my decision to quit smoking made the unit difficult to live in, gross neighbours moved in and the building changed ownership, with a new owner that was a dishonest, capitalistic nihilist. it would have been better if i would have gotten it right the first time, but i had to move out of there, and would have even if i hadn't quit smoking.

hopefully, it works out better, here, once i do the things i need to do to get the unit in proper order.

but, i don't look back at that as something lost - i'm better off being out of there.