Are you happy at home? Or are you dreaming of moving? In the midst of a housing crisis, The duty has called for reader stories, which will be published over the summer. A retiree who has lived in the same apartment for 28 years wonders how much longer he can stay in his cocoon.
What is quality of life? For Jacques Lambert, it is an apartment with “experience”, on the third floor of a triplex in the neighborhood where he has his roots, in Drummondville. The kitchen cabinets look like they came out of a 1950s movie. The whirlpool tub doesn’t work: water comes out of the holes rather than swirling around.
The retired teacher still considers himself lucky: he has lived peacefully for 28 years in this two-bedroom apartment (formerly with his daughter in shared custody). He knows all his neighbors. From his balcony, he hears the concerts, on Wednesdays, in the park across the street. And the cries of the children in the schoolyard a little further away.
Quality of life is also a clothesline. The light coming in through the large windows. Two grocery stores, a pharmacy, a library, the CLSC, a community thrift store and cafes within a few minutes’ walk.
Over the past three years, Jacques Lambert has discovered another attraction in the neighborhood: the tenant defense committee, which he can almost see from his living room. He never thought he would need the help of a committee like this. But one day in 2021, the housing crisis knocked on his door.
It was a “big six-footer” sent by the numbered company that had just bought the triplex. Jacques Lambert remembers that the guy got stuck in the middle of the kitchen.
“He started talking to me like I was his employee,” he says. The company’s emissary handed him an undated document, signed “Landlord,” decreeing an imminent rent increase of $100 — from $415 to $515 per month.
It was take it or leave it.
The tenant also lost access to his storage spaces in the basement and in the garage of the building. And he had to be away from home for two days because workers were coming to install a new floor across the entire apartment.
“You’re like caught. You have a pit bull in front of you. I knew there was something wrong, but I signed the paper,” says Jacques Lambert.
A “profiteering” tenant
I should tell you here that this former French teacher has a small retirement income. At one point in his career, he suffered from depression, then anxiety, and he started working part-time to preserve his mental health.
Let’s go back to the document that his owner made him sign. Rent increase of $100 per month, and so on. Jacques Lambert quickly regretted having signed the document, which The duty was able to consult. With the help of the housing committee – from which he had to insist to be supported, given that he does not have the usual profile of the tenant in distress – the 75-year-old retiree sent the owner company a formal notice. contesting the validity of the document. She reversed her decision.
“One of the owners of the company called me names. He told me that I am a profiteer who monopolizes the housing of poor families,” says Jacques Lambert.
He challenged the rent increases in subsequent years. The increases were still significant: he will pay $530 starting on 1er July. Relations with the owner have calmed down. But the tenant is experiencing anxiety. He wonders how much longer he can stay in his haven of peace.
“For now, it’s settled. We’ll see what happens from year to year,” he said.
He learned that one of the new tenants next door was paying almost twice as much rent as he was. The company that owns the building has bought three other buildings in the area. “There won’t be any poor people left in the place soon. I wonder where they’ll go.”
Joined by The dutythe company that owns the building denied trying to intimidate tenants. It declined to comment further on Jacques Lambert’s situation.
Working Roots
The Saint-Joseph district, where the retiree lived most of his life, is the cradle of working life in Drummondville. The former professor shows us historical black and white photos showing the two textile factories that dominated the sector for almost the entire 20th century.e century — the Drummondville Cotton Company (which became Dominion Textile) and Celanese, established after the construction of two hydroelectric dams on the Saint-François River a century ago.
The documentary We are in cotton, by Denys Arcand, evokes the hard struggles of workers to improve their working conditions. The Quebec Liberation Front even detonated a bomb in Dominion Textile during the 1966 strike.
Long before this historic conflict, Saint-Joseph was a village independent of Drummondville, where workers would settle because there were no sewers or electricity. So no taxes. Over the years, duplexes and triplexes sprang up. A small downtown developed. There was even a movie theater.
The Lambert family has its roots in this working-class neighborhood. Jacques Lambert’s parents were married in 1943 in the church whose steeple can be seen from its back balcony. His mother, an activist in the Young Catholic Workers, founded the first Meals on Wheels in the area.
Today, the factories have closed their doors. A bike path has replaced the railway line that cut the neighbourhood in two. The neighbourhood is very quiet. But there is a dull anger rumbling in the duplexes and triplexes in the area. The anger and anxiety of tenants who wonder how much longer they will have a roof over their heads.