In the midst of a housing crisis, evictions are poisoning the lives of tenants now forced to find a new home. The big moving day of the 1er July thus left a bitter taste for Christopher McInnis: he had to leave his apartment after refusing the rent increase demanded by his ex-landlord. And if such a repossession of housing can be legal, tenants in such situations lack recourse, denounce organizations.
“I had a lot of complications. It was hell, ”says the man in his thirties in front of his furniture stacked in his father’s trailer, who came to help him.
From the street in the Parc-Extension district where he is moving, he explains that, despite his efforts to stay in his old accommodation following his refusal to raise the rent, he had to abdicate. After several unsuccessful attempts to chase Mr. McInnis from the premises, his owner finally asked to repossess the accommodation to accommodate his daughter. Standing on the sidewalk, Christopher McInnis has doubts about the real reasons for the gesture. “I refused a 10% raise because he didn’t want to do anything in housing. »
His hasty departure launched him into the urgent and difficult search for a new home. “I had apartments that had nothing to do with the photos, I had places where the owner did not even move… There are even places where they were “scams”. We went and, in fact, the address did not exist. I had everything,” he says.
Complex procedures
Many landlords in Montreal have undertaken to dislodge their tenants to increase rents, notes Martin Blanchard, of the Regroupement des committees logement et associations de tenants du Québec.
He claims that this upsurge in evictions is directly linked to soaring housing prices. “Landlords who rent out their accommodation can benefit from a large difference in rent compared to tenants who stay in place. They can use the clawback and eviction mechanisms to make a big profit,” he shouts.
According to a study carried out by his organization, the rents posted on the Kijiji platform are more than 50% above the average rent reported by the Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation in the Montreal metropolitan area. “This year, we have the largest increase in rents offered for rent ever observed,” said Mr. Blanchard.
If solutions exist, these are not within everyone’s reach. Tenants have to take very complex individual steps, he said. “It does not work, adds Martin Blanchard. It rests on the shoulders of the tenant to build a dossier of evidence and return to the scene of a traumatic experience. »
He believes that the law making this kind of practice illegal has “no teeth” and is “not applied on the ground” anyway. “At the end of the day, if we manage to get through this maze, we have an average compensation of $5,000 and we don’t return to our accommodation at all. The game is simply not worth the candle,” says Mr. Blanchard.
Christopher McInnis consoles himself by pointing out that he has at least found a place to relocate. “I found a place that looks good. It’s a little more expensive, but it’s acceptable. It’s my business, “he says.
750 households without housing
For its part, the Popular Action Front in Urban Redevelopment fears that the housing crisis will leave a record number of households homeless in the wake of the big moving day. “Two days before the 1er July, in Quebec, there were 750 tenant households who had not found housing ”, against 420 at the same date last year, indicated the spokesperson for the organization, Véronique Laflamme, in a telephone interview.
In Montreal, there were 107 households on Friday “accompanied by the teams and who have still not found a permanent solution”, said the City. Among these, “some were able to negotiate a short-term lease extension, others could be accommodated by relatives”.
According to Mme Laflamme, these figures are only “the tip of the iceberg of the housing crisis”: an unknown number of families must live “in appalling situations” or in a home that is too small or too expensive for their needs, notes she.
With Zacharie Goudreault and The Canadian Press