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Messages - Creepella

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1
General Discussion / "Home Standards Project" announcement
« on: November 15, 2022, 02:44:12 pm »
Since the link to this "Home Standards Project" survey is an announcement, I can't reply to it. So I'm providing a heads up about it here.

I have spent the past two days trying to fill out this survey. The link is homestandards.org
I have concluded it's a massive waste of time. It takes a lot longer than the promised 15 minutes because there are a lot of "essay" style questions.

The fun part is spending over an hour filling it out, then the page crashes and you end up with nothing but a blank page. Then if you manage to refresh the page, everything you just entered is gone.

I've tried several times with three different browsers, and I have a pretty decent computer with a lot of RAM. It's a shame because it could be a useful survey. Too bad it's so badly designed you won't be able to complete it.

So if you try to fill it out and their website crashes, it's not you or your computer, it's their crappy survey.

2
This is typical landlord biased nonsense from CBC/Pravda. The paid media only runs landlord tenant stories if they're about shedding buckets of crocodile tears from "small" landlords. They always try to make it seem as if poor pitiful "small" landlords are always being ripped off by Evil Tenants. There's never a peep about heinous and criminal behaviour of landlords.

The reality is that over 90% of rental housing stock in Canada is owned by large, profitable and mainly foreign based investment trusts. Even basement apartments in detached homes are bought up by these corporations. Every year they shatter their own profit records. And they're enabled by politicians like Doug Ford who carry out literal wars against renters, whom they view as worthless riffraff who deserve to have their wallets emptied. Destroying the housing tribunal is a deliberate move by Ford, to strip tenants of access to justice. He also defunded the community legal clinics for the same reason.

And the most laughable part of this story is the fact that the rental housing tribunal practices heavy favouritism towards landlords, who only have to wait a few weeks for eviction hearings. They also get quicker access in other matters. Tenants, in the meantime, are forced to put up with harassment, maintenance issues and invasion of their privacy for months, if not years, before they get a hearing. I waited three years for my hearing because the landlord kept coming up with excuses to adjourn. Then when tenants finally get their day in court, the adjudicators, who are all on a first name basis with landlord representatives, are paid to refuse to look at tenant's evidence, bully them and throw their cases out. Landlords for the win, yet again.

3
I did more digging and found that critical race theory was first adopted by the Wynne liberals. CRT is pure anti white racism and genocide. The Wynne liberals passed a law called the Anti Racism Act which is pure CRT ideology. The Ford government has done nothing to strike this law down, nor has it moved to make CRT illegal in Ontario, even though it's illegal in 35 US states. In Ontario it infects education, health care, public housing, and social services. It also infests the Ontario Human Rights Commission. The Ford government is complicit in this.

It's hard to find other stories like mine because CRT discrimination is practiced in secret. In housing it's still illegal to refuse to rent to someone based on their race. Non profit housing agencies rely on donations. They'd lose donors if people found out that they were discriminating against tenants. People are being removed from wait lists and denied access to health and social programs without being told. I'm sure the rest of the 550 people who have been removed from my housing provider's wait list aren't aware of it. I only found out by accident when I became suspicious that the housing provider was lying to me about my position on their wait list.

I filed access to information requests to get a full copy of my file from the housing provider. I had to make three written requests and then threaten to sue them before they provided a partial copy of my file last week. Even the partial copy contained evidence showing that they moved my file off of the main housing wait list onto a made-up wait list that doesn't provide housing.

There's other evidence of discrimination in my file. When I was having trouble with my landlord in 2020 and was afraid I'd be evicted, their notes said "she's getting so much money, she can afford to move to another market rent apartment" (for twice the rent I'm paying now, and when they haven't asked about my income since 2014). I pay 48% of my income in rent, by the way. A non white tenant would have been moved up on the wait list. I'm 57 years old. When I asked them about applying for senior services and housing (they have a page about it on their website) I was told that they don't offer senior services and to look for market rent housing again. Clearly they think I'm too "privileged" to deserve housing assistance.

Next week I file a formal complaint with the Ontario privacy officer to get my entire file. Clearly this housing authority has something to hide. I have found an investigative reporter whose mind was blown by my story and she has promised to write an exposé about it. I've also applied to the non profit housing authority in my home town (outside the GTA) after looking at their website and seeing no evidence of critical race theory doctrine.

4
General Discussion / Re: Renovations While In Unit
« on: September 28, 2022, 04:03:51 pm »
I went through almost the exact same situation in 2020. My landlord had to replace the plumbing pipes (risers) in the walls, ceilings and cupboards in my kitchen and bathroom. They ripped out walls, ceilings and cupboards. There was dust and debris all over the place. I had no use of water or the toilet from 9-5 each day. I had to stack all of my things from the kitchen and bathroom in my living room, plus I had to build a temporary cage for my small dogs. Everything had to be covered to keep the dust out. The work took almost three weeks.

It was a fiasco because the landlord took the opportunity while the plumbers were working to sneak into my apartment without my knowledge, snoop through my personal belongings including lifting covers on pet cages, then they threatened me with eviction because my apartment was a mess (ya think?). They also made a malicious cruelty call to Ontario Animal Services in an attempt to have my pets forcibly removed. I sued them at the housing tribunal but lost because the biased adjudicator decided that I needed video of the landlord snooping to prove my case, so she dismissed my case.

My landlord did a few things right, and this is what you should expect from your landlord. First of all, Right of Entry notices have to be REASONABLE. Serving you with 24 hours notice for a major renovation is not reasonable. They should be giving you 60 days notice for the repair. You have to be given enough notice to prepare for the renovation, like moving belongings, covering belongings, etc.

Their notice must contain a DETAILED description of the work being done, including what, when, and where in your apartment. They have to tell you who will be doing the work. In my case the plumbing contractor provided a blueprint of my unit with the work areas marked, and a page of details about what they were going to do and what I needed to do to prepare the work areas. They told me how long it would take for the work, what time they'd show up each day and what time they'd finish for the day. They even gave me the foreman's phone number in case I had questions.

During the work, the landlord MUST give you separate 24 hour notices for each day, especially if the landlord and/or his agents (super, handymen) are planning to enter. It's normal for the landlord and/or their handymen to enter more than once during the work, to inspect the work. They have to state the time and reason for each day's entry. A blanket entry notice for the entire work period is NOT acceptable. My landlord gave me notices for each day - except for the day they snooped through my stuff without my knowledge.

Most landlords will hire a professional contractor for large jobs, but some use their own handymen. Based on your description it will probably be a pro contractor. They know how to do this type of repair while the tenant stays in the apartment, like by doing one area at a time. If they don't give enough detail about the work, make sure to ask.

With this type of work there will probably be all kinds of people going in and out of your apartment. I can't stress this enough - GET VIDEO CAMERAS if you don't have them. Set them up in the work areas and inside your front door where you can film anyone who enters. They're not too expensive and if anyone does anything wrong, you will have time stamped video evidence when you sue the landlord. If it's a problem with the contractor's behaviour, you still sue the landlord because their contractor is considered an "agent" of the landlord under the RTA.

I'm not sure how familiar you are with the rental housing tribunal website, but for more information on the rules about renovations the two Interpretation Guidelines you want are "Tenant's Rights" (section entitled "Interference due to work performed by the landlord") and "The Landlord's Right of Entry into a Rental Unit". Link: https://tribunalsontario.ca/ltb/rules-practice-directions-guidelines/

I hope this is helpful.

5
I am disabled. I applied for supportive geared to income housing for my disability 8 years ago. Their wait time as advertised on their website is 10 years. Their mandate is to provide supportive housing and treatment to people who have my disability.

I hadn't heard from the housing provider since they called me two years ago during the lockdowns. At that time I asked them where my application was on their wait list. They blew me off with a story about my file being "reassessed". At the time I believed them.

Then recently I called them again. I was given the same song and dance about a "reassessment", but this time they added to the story by telling me that my file was with "a third party", that they were deciding whether to put my file on an additional wait list, and that it would be with them for 3 months. I became concerned about the misuse of my personal medical information, the new super secret second wait list, and since there had been no change to my file in 8 years I couldn't understand why my file needed so many "reassessments".

That was when I looked up their website, and found their "strategic plan", "annual reports" and board meeting minutes. All three items went on and on and on about something called "EDI". There were also many references to "serving target groups", "privilege" and "diversity". When I Googled EDI I found it's Critical Race Theory. Critical Race Theory (CRT) is an ideology that believes that certain races are more entitled to services than others, and that "privileged" races don't deserve any help at all. Their annual reports indicated that they removed over 550 people from their wait list between 2019 and 2021. They only have 1000 housing units. Clearly they kicked the "privileged" people off of their wait list during the lockdowns, and without telling them.

I also found evidence that this housing provider (which is a non profit mainly funded by the Ontario government) spent a huge sum of taxpayer money paying a company to indoctrinate their staff and teach them how to lie to the clients who are excluded from the wait list.

Obviously I was angry as I've clearly been removed from their wait list because of my race, and they're lying to me about it. Just because I'm White doesn't mean I'm less disabled or in need of housing than anyone else. I thought about complaining to the Ontario Human Rights Tribunal, but their website is full of CRT ideology as well. So if you are White and your landlord discriminates against you, you now have no legal recourse other than the RHT.

I wanted to file a complaint with the housing provider's main funder, the Ontario Ministry of Housing. Then I found evidence that they were the ones behind this racism and discrimination! They have an entire website which gives housing providers the information and teaching materials they need to adopt Critical Race Theory in tenant selection. I tried contacting a few big name news reporters who have written negative articles about CRT in the past, but they didn't bother to reply to my emails.

So, if you are on a wait list for social housing, health care or anything else from this province, I strongly suggest you take a look at their websites, and give them a call to ask where you are on their wait list. If they did it to my housing provider, they will do it to the rest of them. Don't be surprised if you get the same fairy tale stories as I did. And if you think Doug Ford's government is "conservative" - think again. CRT is pure cultural Marxism aka communism.

6
Unfortunately both articles are paywalled and can't be read.

You can use the website archive.is to archive paywalled articles so they can be seen by non subscribers.

You just paste the website address into the red box on the archive.is page. Archiving takes a few minutes as the elements of the page are saved. You will see lines of text and web addresses, then once the archive is complete you'll see your website. Copy/paste the URL of the archived site into your post and people should be able to view it without the paywall.

Here's an example of an archived article about the Queen's favourite horse - https://archive.ph/bDnjr

7
The OHRC has declared access to air conditioning a human rights issue. They are also calling for the Residential Tenancies Act to be updated to include a provincial maximum temperature for all apartments and declare air conditioning to be a vital service, just as they do for heating as a vital service with a minimum temperature.

"Recent media reports point to a concerning trend of housing providers denying tenants’ ability to install air conditioning units and threatening rent increases or eviction, or both, if they do so. Any situation where a housing provider issues a complete ban on air conditioners and cooling devices without exceptions likely violates the Code and could lead to a human rights complaint.

As the number of extreme heat waves increases, the right to accessible, adequate and safe housing should include air conditioning. Landlords and housing providers should remove blanket bans on air conditioners and cooling devices. Any policies that prohibit these products must contain human rights-based exemptions and reflect the duty to accommodate."

"The Ontario Human Rights Commission calls on the Government of Ontario to include air conditioning as a vital service, like the provision of heat, under RTA regulations and to establish a provincial maximum temperature to make sure that vulnerable Code-protected tenants are protected against threats of eviction for using safely installed air conditioning units.

Extreme heat caused by climate change is killing people from Code-protected groups disproportionately and will continue to get worse. A human rights-based approach to air conditioning/cooling is required to make sure all Ontarians have accessible, adequate and safe housing."

Now that the OHRC has acknowledged that air conditioning is a human right, it's good news for people fighting their landlords for the right to install and use air conditioners without harassment and demands for illegal fees. These people can now file a human rights complaint, especially if they have a disability or health condition which is made worse by heat. I'm guessing it would take a lot less time to file with OHRC than trying to file a T2 and wait a year for a landlord biased hearing at the housing tribunal.

https://www.ohrc.on.ca/en/news_centre/ohrc-statement-human-rights-extreme-heat-waves-and-air-conditioning

8
Akelius / Re: Garbage chutes shut down
« on: June 30, 2022, 07:01:56 pm »
It's only 5 days!  When I read the title of this thread I thought they were closing your chutes permanently!

Landlords have to maintain and spray the garbage chutes regularly, otherwise they're in violation of city by-laws. It's likely that they were ordered to do this work after a city inspection. Would you rather they just did nothing and then your garbage chute stinks and your apartments become filled with bugs?

I live in a 250 apt highrise, they close the chutes several times a year for maintenance and spraying, and over the Christmas holidays when the building staff are off (they rent a giant dumpster during that time). So far nobody has died from carrying their garbage down the elevators to the dumpsters for a few days. And, we have elderly and disabled people here as well. I'm disabled. My apartment is located behind the garbage chute. If they don't spray it I'm the one who gets an apartment full of ants, spiders, flies (they come out of my washroom vent from the chute) and bedbugs.

For five days tenants can either store their trash on their balcony or get a neighbour or the super to help them take it downstairs to the dumpsters. You should be thankful that they're maintaining your garbage chutes instead of leaving them to become bug infested, broken stink holes. I know of buildings where they locked the chutes permanently after the landlord got sick of cleaning up after pigs that abuse the garbage chutes.

9
I put up with landlord abuse around air conditioners for several years. Tactics included illegal entries, threatening letters, fake eviction notices, multiple "inspections" for the purpose of harassment and even malicious calls to animal control in an effort to force me to get rid of my pets. Then in 2019 I filed a T2 Application about Tenant Rights with the Board, for harassment and illegal entries.

If your landlord starts abusing you and demanding illegal air conditioner fees:
1. Check your lease. If there is no clause giving them the right to charge air conditioner fees, they have no right to charge air conditioner fees. If there is a clause allowing them to charge you, there is usually an amount specified. You do have to pay that amount, but no more than that amount. If your lease says "fee to cover hydro charge" without specifying the amount, they can't charge you anything unless they give you proof of how much your air conditioners are costing them in hydro fees (like copies of the hydro bills during winter and during AC season to show the difference).

2. Keep copies of everything the landlord serves you with - entry notices, demand letters, threat letters, eviction threats.  You will need them as evidence.

3. Keep notes about any entries or entry demands or other harassment activity, including what happened while they were in your apartment. Better yet, get an indoor surveillance camera or two and record the entries.

4. Air conditioner fees ARE NOT RENT. Landlords like to pretend it is, and claim that they can evict you for "non payment of rent" if you refuse to pay an illegal AC fee. This is false, and it's harassment.

5. If you are bullied into paying an illegal AC fee, you can file a T1 - Tenant Application for a Rebate to get the illegal charge back. This must be filed within a year of the date you paid the illegal amount otherwise it becomes legal under Fraud's changes to the RTA.

10
I'm sure municipal politicians justify taxing apartment buildings more than private residences by saying that apartment buildings use up more municipal resources (water, sewers etc) than single family homes. I wonder how much tax private condo owners and corporations are charged? Probably less than rental apartment buildings. If you think about it, a single family 3 bedroom house uses a lot more resources than a single family 3 bedroom apartment. Anything purchased in bulk is cheaper, even garbage collection. The city doesn't have to send a garbage truck to stop at each apartment in a highrise. Renters are literally forced to subsidize the wealthy lifestyles of homeowners.

These days politicians treat people a certain way based on their income and ability to afford "middle class" things. Their actions have nothing to do with democracy or justice. It's all about haves and have nots. They don't care that nearly half of Ontarians are renters. They don't care who we vote for because we don't matter to them. That's why you never see election ads targeting renters. When you operate from the top of an ivory tower, the little peasants at the bottom are beneath your notice.

Renters are at the bottom of this feudal class system because we can't afford the shiny things that politicians and their cronies can afford. They actively hate the peasantry and blame us for our situation. That's why they view the current housing crisis as only affecting people who can afford single family detached homes and two cars in the driveway. That's why they fill up the few subsidized homes with gangsters and refuse to kick them out while families are crammed into one bedroom and bachelor apartments. That's why Dough Ford's mission in life is to trample on tenants and the poor and make us suffer. To Ford, tenants are lowly cash cows to be milked dry as punishment for not being able to afford the shiny things. His municipal counterparts share his attitude. So the extra tax we are charged is thrown at wealthy landlords and developers so they can build more multimillion dollar mansions for the rich, instead of making them build affordable housing for those who are actually suffering from the housing crisis.

11
FYI here is a non paywalled version of the article: https://archive.ph/ERurE

12
General Discussion / New Section Suggestion: LT Board and Hearings
« on: May 05, 2022, 04:09:55 pm »
Hearings at the Landlord Tenant Board are very intimidating and tenants get almost no practical advice about LTB procedures and how to handle themselves at a hearing. I'm actually surprised this topic didn't already exist.

I just went through a hearing and it was a very stressful experience, complete with a board Member who was both biased to the landlord and disorganized. Tenants are at a huge disadvantage because the adjudicators are all on a first name basis with landlord representatives. There are only about 20 of these reps, but they dominate proceedings with the full cooperation of their pals the adjudicators. Meanwhile all we get are volunteer legal representatives who are usually students or inexperienced, this includes duty counsel.

I suggest that there should be a section about hearings and Board procedures, like disclosing evidence, preparing for hearings, or other Board rules and procedures. Tenants could share our stories about experiences we had, landlord representatives and their behaviours, etc. as well as answering questions about board hearings.

13
Yes I know this is an old thread but I have an answer to the "9-5" timeframe.

I was filing a T2 against my landlord for illegal entries, and some of the deficient entries I had in my evidence were fire alarm inspections. I had a problem with both the timeframe and the fact that often nobody would show up for these inspections.

I was told by a lawyer at a legal clinic that the "reasonable timeframe" in the RTA only applies when the landlord has control over the time of the entry.

Fire inspections are often performed not by the landlord but by the city fire inspector. They inspect multiple units in each building. The landlord has no control over the time the inspector will arrive or the length of time it will take for them to inspect units. The fire inspector usually tells them that they will be there sometime between 9 and 5 and that is why the landlord provides this timeframe.

I actually called the fire inspector to verify this information. He told me that they do give a 9-5 timeframe to landlords, and that they pick units at random to inspect. The landlord is obligated to notify all units because he doesn't know which units or how many will be inspected. He has no control over the time of arrival or even if your unit will be inspected at all. 

On the other hand, if a landlord carries out the inspections himself or hires a company to do it, he does have control over the time of arrival and which units are inspected. In that case a 9-5 timeframe would be viewed as a deficient notice by the Board.

14
Harassment by Landlord / My harassment story
« on: May 05, 2022, 12:35:26 pm »
I have a landlord who plays all sorts of tricks in order to harass tenants. I just finished a long T2 harassment case with the Board that ended with me losing. I've learned a lot from that incident and wanted to share it here so that people in the same situation will find it useful.

My landlord likes to demand money he's not entitled to, then when the tenant refuses to pay, the illegal entries, threats and invasions of privacy start. They started doing this to me a few years ago when they decided that the air conditioner fee on my lease wasn't enough for them. Nasty collection letters, threats of eviction based on false accusations, surprise inspections, demands to get rid of my pets - you name it.

After three years of putting up with this harassment every spring and summer, I finally filed a T2 with the Board in 2019. Months later the hearing took place. I was terrified to present at the in person hearing. The landlord's rep approached me asking if I'd be willing to mediate, so I said yes out of anxiety. I was also afraid my landlord would take reprisals if I won the case. The settlement basically said that the landlord agreed to follow the RTA for entries from then on.

Only four months later in 2020 the landlord was doing a major plumbing repair to replace all the pipes in my walls. I was told to remove all of my belongings from the kitchen and bathroom, and I had to stack them in my living and dining areas. I was told to cage or confine any pets outside the work areas. They ripped the walls and ceilings out of the kitchen and bathroom. There was plaster dust and debris everywhere. I had to cover my two bird cages and put my two small dogs in a pen which was also covered. I tried to cover everything so my belongings wouldn't be exposed. The repairs took two weeks to complete.

Two days into the repairs, my landlord snuck into my apartment while I was home and in the bedroom to stay out of the way of the plumbers. He removed covers from cages and my belongings to snoop underneath. He then served me with a threatening letter demanding that I get rid of all of my pets, and accusing me of flooding the floors, causing vermin, and "harboring caged animals". I was given 5 days to get rid of the pets and "bring my apartment to a habitable state". That letter was the only way I found out that he had illegally entered my apartment.

But it gets better. Less than an hour after I received the letter, an inspector from Ontario Animal Services was at my door demanding to enter and perform a cruelty inspection. You can guess who called them. All he found was dust around the cages (gee, ya think?). There was nothing wrong with my pets and he told me I was taking good care of them, especially under the circumstances.

My landlord came back twice for followup inspections as soon as the work was completed. He rampaged through my apartment in search of a washing machine (I don't have one) and claimed he saw one when he was in my apartment recently. He pointed to my belongings and demanded I get rid of them - my pets, my bicycle, my grocery shopping buggy, even my walker. I was rudely informed that he would keep coming back every two weeks until I got rid of what he wanted. Luckily the lockdowns began.

I wanted to take the landlord to court over this breach. I contacted the local legal clinic and they told me to file an Application to Reopen my previous mediated case. That turned out to be a big mistake. The reason is that the burden of proof to reopen an LTB mediated settlement is much higher than just opening a new T2. You have to convince the Member to reopen before they will hear your case. I had a lot of pieces of evidence for my original 2019 case. I was wrongly told I had to submit them with the Application to Reopen for the 2020 incidents. Then I was wrongly told by duty counsel to submit the old evidence again when it was time for the evidence disclosure for the hearing.

The hearing (May 2/22) was a fiasco. The board Member was in a big hurry and was disorganized and unprepared to hear my case. Despite the fact that I had submitted my evidence a week early, she didn't have a copy of it, and became angry with me because she couldn't find it. I had to resend it to her, then another burst of anger because there were so many pieces of evidence. I tried to get her to look at the Evidence table of contents I had submitted (required by the Board when you submit evidence) and she couldn't find that either.

The Member only ended up looking at one piece of my evidence, the threat letter the landlord served to me after his illegal secret inspection. The landlord's rep was a drama queen, trying to start arguments with me, throwing hissy fits and interrupting any time I said anything against his client. If he wasn't interrupting me, the Member was. I don't think I was able to complete a single sentence at any time in the hearing. He started whining that I had no proof that the landlord had entered my apartment illegally because the letter began "It has come to our attention". He tried to accuse the plumbers and anyone else he could think of, of snooping and reporting to the landlord. The Member demanded to know if I had any evidence proving the landlord was the one who entered, I told her he admitted it to my face. She claimed that's not evidence and shut down my application. By the way, under the RTA a landlord is responsible for the actions of the people he hires, so even if the plumbers were the ones who ransacked my belongings, the landlord would have been responsible anyway.

Lessons Learned
- NEVER mediate a T2 case. The landlord will just sign it in bad faith and then reoffend, and then get away with it because it's so hard to get a Member to reopen a mediated case. Landlords try and talk a tenant into mediating at the last minute because it's to their advantage, not yours. If you do mediate and they reoffend, just open a new T2 and mention the file number of your first application so they know this isn't the first offense.
- Make sure your evidence is brief, organized and relevant. If you have a group of items that relate to each other (like right of entry notices all connected to the same issue), you can merge them into one PDF file. You can also use video and sound recordings as evidence.
- Consider getting a doorbell/peephole camera, this will document any entries AND it also documents what time or if a landlord served a notice. Also consider cameras for inside your apartment. Install them where they are easily seen so whoever enters knows they're being filmed (prevents illegal behaviours)
- keep all correspondence from the landlord for at least a year. That includes instructions if they're doing repair work in your unit. You never know when you might need proof of illegal behaviour. If you have access to a scanner, scan them and save them electronically.
- be very wary if a landlord or their contractor is doing repairs in your apartment, video, pics and document everything. If you can, supervise and escort anyone who enters your suite for any reason.
- take legal advice from duty counsel or legal clinics with a grain of salt. These are not lawyers, they are students for the most part. Their advice is not infallible. Do some research on your own to verify their advice.

15
Months? Try years.

I just had my final hearing this week for a case which has gone on for THREE YEARS.

I lost, thanks to an angry, dismissive, landlord centric adjudicator who was so disorganized she didn't even have my evidence in front of her, even though I sent it before the Board deadline. She blamed me because she didn't have the evidence, made me resend it and then refused to look at it anyway.

It was a harassment/illegal entry case from 2019. I made the mistake of mediating, then 4 months later the landlord breached and I filed for a reopening. It took 8 months to get a hearing date. Then the landlord's representative died (apparently) and we were told we'd get another hearing date in three months. We didn't get a date until 6 months later, on a week's notice.

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