“Here, tenants are full citizens”

Throughout her son’s early childhood, Nathalie Deschênes was told by doctors that Alexis’ life would be severely limited by his intellectual disability. He would never be able to get through high school or work, doctors predicted.

Alexis Pronovost defied all these predictions. He completed vocational training in high school. He works in a supermarket. He takes drum lessons and is a DJ in his spare time. And for almost two years, he has been living in an apartment. An apartment located in a building where 10 other people with intellectual disabilities or autism spectrum disorder live.

“We said to ourselves: “What’s his life going to be like?” And finally, he has a great life! », rejoices his mother.

Alexis dreamed of this apartment. The other tenants too. At the start of his twenties, Félix Lapointe’s cohabitation with his parents had become difficult. “We weren’t in the same time zone. There were a lot of conflicts,” says his mother. So Félix did what all young people of that age do: he started looking. “He took the RE/MAX catalog. He called a real estate agent for a $3.5 million house with five bathrooms! » Michèle Lafontaine laughs again.

Four years of work

It was at this moment, in 2017, that M^me Lafontaine decided to take matters into his own hands. She had visited supervised apartments intended for clients living with intellectual disabilities in Louiseville. “Why wouldn’t we have that in Shawinigan? »

This simple question started a process that lasted four years. “I left with two sheets of paper. » M^me Lafontaine brought together several partners, drew up plans, made budgets, filled out dozens and dozens of pages of funding requests and organized tons of activities to raise money.

Because for a project of 12 housing units, estimated at 3.5 million, 1.8 million had to come “from the community”.

Michèle Lafontaine and her accomplices, Jean-François Morand and Josée St-Pierre, knocked on every door, sold their project, convinced everyone.

“The burden that it requires to develop a project of this magnitude is enormous,” summarizes M.^me Fountain.

For his part, Félix, who is now 30 years old, made his contribution: he climbed Mount Albert, in Gaspésie, with an entire team, raising $13,000. He was so exhausted at the end of the course that his partners carried him on their backs. “I can’t watch this without crying,” he said, covering his eyes to show us the video shot that day. We understand: the little 12-minute film would bring tears to a rock.

Watch the video of Félix’s ascent of Mount Albert

And then, in May 2022, I have my apartment welcomed its first tenants. Simon, Marie-Christine, Félix, Alexis, David: they received their keys. For the first time, they were going to live alone, avoiding the model that has become almost obligatory in Quebec for the accommodation of adults living with an intellectual disability, which is the foster family.

Mr. Caouette, professor and holder of the Chair in Self-Determination and Disability at the University of Quebec at Trois-Rivières (UQTR), was very closely associated with the project. I have my apartmentwhich constitutes, according to him, a model to export.

For him, from the start, the emerging organism was a formidable laboratory. “We could have had a beautiful building, but if we don’t have the best support practices, we return to an institutional model. Here, tenants are full citizens. We are not in a logic of support. We just give them the support they need to live the life they want to live! » Symbolic, but crucial gesture: the speakers – and the parents – knock on the doors before entering. And if the tenant doesn’t want to let them in… they stay outside!

Martin Caouette believes in the project so much that he dragged Félix Lapointe to Paris, to a conference on the self-determination of people living with an intellectual disability. In front of the delegates, Félix proudly brandished his lease. “People didn’t believe it, that he had a lease, that he had signed himself,” says M^me Fountain. Financially, the project is advantageous: housing I have my apartment costs the State three times less than accommodation with a host family.