Evicted for $500 debt

Aicha* thought she would find herself on the street with her 10-year-old son last September, when she had to leave her job in a hurry to return to her home in LaSalle, where bailiffs were emptying her apartment.

“They had taken all my things out into the hallway, put everything jumbled into trash bags, the food mixed with the clothes and important papers. A gentleman I don’t know had taken my kittens,” she relates, still shaken by the event.

Why was she evicted from the accommodation she had occupied since 2014? Because of a $500 debt she owed to her landlord.

However, she had agreed with him to repay this sum the following month. The owner told her that he was giving up taking her to the Administrative Housing Tribunal.

“I often paid my rent late, but I always ended up paying it back, with interest,” says Aicha, who had lost her job and found herself temporarily on social assistance, before starting a new job. work as a chambermaid in a hotel.

With her meager salary, she struggled to pay her rent of $1,025. The apartment was not very well maintained, but the single mother did not want to move because she lived near her son’s school and not too far from her work, in Dorval. In any case, affordable rents are very rare in times of housing crisis.

Without family or friends in Montreal who could take her in, Aicha was helpless. Would she and her son end up in a homeless shelter?

Rescue buoy

Fortunately, his boss knew that the Office municipal d’habitation de Montréal (OMHM) could help households finding themselves without housing. Aicha was therefore able to benefit from the Passerelle program and has been staying in a city center hotel since her eviction.

The situation is not ideal: before the strike, she had to drive her son to school in LaSalle before going to work in Dorval, which required her to leave at 6 a.m. each morning. Due to her late arrivals at daycare at the end of the day, she racked up hefty fines.

But all this is coming to an end: Aicha is moving this week into new accommodation in Lachine where, thanks to the housing support program (PSL), she will only pay 25% of her income in rent, the rest being covered by the government .

In addition to the Passerelle program, Aicha was able to benefit from the Old Brewery Mission’s homelessness prevention and housing support program, which helped find her an apartment. She will also continue to receive psychosocial monitoring from a worker.

” I am so happy ! I didn’t expect to receive such help. I thank God,” exclaims Aicha, as she wipes the tears streaming down her cheeks in her cramped hotel room.

The Old Brewery Mission’s program even provides financial assistance for the purchase of furniture, since it was only able to place a small portion of its goods in storage.

Assess the risk

“It’s a new approach that we have developed over the past two years. We help people at risk of homelessness before they find themselves on the street, to prevent them from going through shelters,” explains Marie Henninger, coordinator of prevention and housing support services at the Old Brewery Mission.

Organizations such as detention centers, refugee assistance centers and the OMHM refer people at risk to the Old Brewery Mission. They are then assessed according to the urgency of their situation.

If someone is about to be evicted from their home, workers can, for example, negotiate an agreement with the owner and then make a budget plan with the tenant to avoid late payments.

But in many cases, the person has to be relocated, which is no easy task in times of housing shortage.

The program has had around 300 people referred to it so far and has managed to place half of them. “The profiles are very varied,” says Marie Henninger. We have men, women, the elderly, asylum seekers, and even families, who are sometimes at risk of homelessness. »

* assumed first name used to preserve anonymity