“Monday morning, it was knocking on our doors, we were wondering what was going on. Well, it was an eviction notice, delivered by bailiffs. It’s violent…” Suzanne Loiselle tells me on the phone, when she finally stops for a moment. It’s because the previous forty-eight hours have been eventful at the Résidence Mont-Carmel, a private residence for seniors (RPA) in the Centre-Sud region recently acquired by the LRM Group, a company owned by Henry Zavriyev, a young investor recognized for its predatory practices.
The manoeuvre, highlighted earlier this week by Radio-Canada and The Press, is particularly ugly. In December, the building, previously owned by a family business involved in providing care and services to residents, was sold for the tidy sum of $40 million. We can guess the attraction: more than 200 rental units on René-Lévesque Boulevard, a stone’s throw from downtown. There is a dollar to be made. But “little old people” in it, it’s cumbersome.
So much so that, this week, the residents learned by way of a bailiff that they would have to resolve to the disappearance of the services offered by the RPA, and to suffer an increase in their rent. Otherwise, outside.
It seems so easy, too easy, to throw old people on the street without anyone reacting. Except that the LRM Group has fallen on badly: it turns out that the Résidence Mont-Carmel is also a landmark for activists. There are a handful of people who have dedicated their lives to fighting to defend the most vulnerable, and who have certainly not said their last word. “We won’t let go of them until we have answers,” Suzanne Loiselle told me, bluntly.
I have already spoken to you about Suzanne Loiselle. Last spring, we had the opportunity to discuss during the publication of the documentary So be they, a magnificent film about the closure of the Quebec chapter of the Soeurs auxiliatrices, a small anti-conformist and protesting community that has dedicated itself for decades to the fight for social justice. However, it turns out that after having closed their books, the last six Quebec “auxis” chose to settle in the Résidence Mont-Carmel, this RPA located in a working-class neighborhood where they could live together in the long term, without to worry.
By going to meet the auxis at Mont-Carmel, I noticed the benefits of a living environment where everyone can preserve their autonomy, while being able to count on the attention of the staff. For meals, for common areas, for the emergency bell, just in case. These places are not only apartment buildings, they also forge community ties, between residents, with staff. It’s a whole community that is uprooted by deciding to coldly change the destination of the building.
“The staff are even more upset than some residents,” Suzanne Loiselle told me. They know the world so well that they know very well who is going to get away with it, and who is going to have a hard time taking the hit. » Those whose financial situation is too precarious to absorb the rise in rent, those whose health is not strong enough to live in unaccompanied accommodation, those for whom the stress of moving risks being the last straw , after two years of pandemic. “We are not the worst off, but at 98, 94, what are the means to defend yourself when a bailiff knocks on your door? Suzanne Loiselle gets carried away.
There is reason to be angry. I have often spoken to you here of attempted evictions, of tenants placed on an ejection seat overnight. This story has tens of thousands of faces, of voices, which together recount the transformation of Montreal into a city that is less and less habitable, where affordable housing and friendly living environments are constantly threatened by the greediness of developers and the hopes enrichment of small investors “with a human face” who dislodge people to makeover their acquisition (we see you too, it’s not just numbered companies that destroy lives).
Except that this story of eviction is enough to make fists clench. There is of course the arrogance of the LRM Group, which multiplies this kind of maneuver while sending journalists who question their practices to graze. Except that’s for sure—these people do the damage they’re meant to do, and if they can still get a good night’s sleep, good for them.
The scandal, in my opinion, lies rather on the side of the inaction of the public authorities, of the legislator, faced with this type of manoeuvre. For years, we have been hammering the need for strong intervention to preserve what remains of decent and truly affordable living environments in Montreal; that we demand real protection for tenants threatened by the housing crisis and real estate speculation.
But here, the savagery borders on the absurd: who can watch the residents of an RPA being thrown into the street, after the two years that we have just lived, where Quebec supposedly “woke up” compared to the fate reserved for elders in our society? This is the most sordid possible encounter of the housing crisis with the general indifference towards the elderly. Allowing this aberration to run wild, on the pretext that the market does what it wants, would be an unforgivable error.