The administration of Valérie Plante, which has made the fight against unsanitary housing one of its battle horses in terms of housing, has missed its target in terms of inspections, while barely a few dozen reports offenses per year were given to a handful of owners for “heavy cases” of apartments in poor condition in the metropolis, we learned.
The duty obtained the results of the inspections regarding unsanitary housing carried out by the City’s Housing Service over the past three years as well as the first three months of the current year. Its inspectors deal with “heavy cases” in terms of cleanliness and maintenance of housing that are transmitted to it by the boroughs, recalled Tuesday in an interview the head of housing on the executive committee, Benoit Dorais. These are generally buildings with dozens of rental units that are faced with various problems, such as the presence of mold, vermin or debris related to unfinished work.
After an increase in the number of inspections carried out by this service between 2018 and 2019, this number fell by more than half in 2020, in the context of the pandemic, to reach 1298. A number which continued to fall in 2021 to reach 1,227 dwellings inspected, according to data provided by the City. The boroughs, for their part, carried out approximately 1,000 fewer inspections in 2020 than the previous year, indicated Mr. Dorais.
The elected representative of Projet Montréal blames the pandemic, which has limited the possibility of deploying several inspectors to visit several unsanitary dwellings in the same building, for health reasons.
Thus, the City was unable to achieve its objective of carrying out 31,200 inspections between 2018 and 2021, as set out in an action plan dating from the start of the first mandate of Mayor Valérie Plante, confirmed Mr. Dorais. “From June, we will be able to really be in catch-up mode,” he assured, however.
Tenants have also been less likely to report cases of unsanitary conditions in recent years, noted the City by email. In interviews, several community organizers of housing committees in Montreal associated this situation with the glaring lack of affordable housing in the metropolis.
“People are very fearful, they don’t want to lose their roof, so they don’t want to talk about it […] They shouldn’t accept their unsanitary conditions, but they do it anyway,” for fear of losing their housing, noted Gaétan Roberge, from the Ville-Marie Housing Committee.
few fines
Moreover, these are only a small fragment of these inspections that lead to the issuance of statements of offence. Just 17 fines were handed over in 2019, for a total of $13,800. This amount rose to $37,500 in 2020 and to $66,075 last year, in a pandemic context where the City has focused on the most “urgent” cases of unsanitary conditions, for which higher penalties are imposed. apply.
The number of reports issued annually does not exceed a few dozen and the average amount of these has fluctuated between 681 and 1,500 dollars over the past three years. Derisory sums for large owners, who find themselves receiving several statements of offense without changing their behavior, deplored several organizations in To have to.
“It gives the impression that there is no hope for the tenants” who live in substandard housing, sighs the community organizer of Project Genesis, in the Côte-des-Neiges district, Darby MacDonald. According to her, the value of the fines issued, “it’s really nothing” for many owners.
“In the majority of cases, the insalubrity is caused by the behavior of the tenants and not because of the building,” retorted Tuesday the director general of the Corporation of real estate owners of Quebec, Benoit Ste-Marie, who sees this as “one of the reasons” why few findings are issued by City inspectors.
No inspection carried out over the past three years by the Housing Service has also led to “the evacuation of dwellings to be condemned because of their obsolescence”, indicated the City by email. Thirty notices of deterioration were however sent to owners last year, noted Mr. Dorais.
“With only 44 statements of offense in a building stock in ruins in 2021, the administration clearly does not meet the needs of Montrealers,” reacted in writing the spokesperson for Ensemble Montréal in the fight against poverty and homelessness, Benoit Langevin, who believes that the data obtained by The duty “demonstrate the failure of the administration of Projet Montréal in the fight against insalubrity”.
Judicial heaviness
Moreover, currently, as soon as a statement of offense for unsanitary conditions is contested before the Municipal Court, the measures taken by the City to secure the accommodation concerned must be put on hold until a judgment is rendered, often a year later. And often, these fines are canceled by judges, recognizes Mr. Dorais.
“Right now, it’s not working,” says the elected official, who intends to “work with the Municipal Court” so that the City is able to issue repeated fines to owners who are slow to resolve an unsanitary problem. in a dwelling.
Jacynthe Morin, from the Montréal-Nord housing committee, points to the lack of inspectors at the city’s housing department. They are currently about fifteen, despite an increase in recent years, confirmed Mr. Dorais.
“We have good regulations in Montreal, but we still have to enforce them. There is clearly a lack of resources,” said the community organizer. An issue recognized by Benoit Dorais, who mentions a possible increase in staff, in particular in order to enforce the future certification for “responsible owner” of the City, which will be the subject of a public consultation next week.