“It burned in our bronchi”

1^er Last November, Marie-Pier Da Silva and her partner packed their boxes and left their home on Davidson Street in a hurry, after a year and a half there. “It was either I quit or my health suffered. » The mold infestation was so bad in the home that the couple was literally suffocating.

The problems begin in the fall of 2022, when the cold weather arrives and the windows must be closed. After an autumn and a winter spent in the accommodation, the partner of M^me Da Silva found himself in the emergency room last June. “He was no longer able to breathe. » A month later, it was Marie-Pier Da Silva who had to consult urgently. “The oxygen was no longer going to the lungs,” she relates.

They go home with asthma pumps. However, they never suffered from this disease.

The couple, unable to breathe in their bedroom, move the bed into the living room. He then realizes that it is the room most affected by water infiltration. “We no longer slept at night. We were always on the pumps. »

On September 13, M^me Da Silva consults Doctor Stéphane Perron, public health specialist and clinician at CHUM. “There is something in the air in her home that is making her sick. But not all people react the same way. In short, what is in the air in the apartment is irritating, but some people are more sensitive to it than others,” he explains in an interview. Asthma and allergy testing continues for M^me Da Silva, he specifies.

At the same time, the tenant says she notices many problems in the building. There is a beef belly on the brick. Some bricks are loose to the point that they fall off the wall on their own. According to her, the air vents are not compliant.

In July, she sent a formal notice to her owner, Suzanne Tremblay. “We started to notice chronic and respiratory rhinitis problems in the fall of 2022, when we started closing the windows,” she says in the document. We spent the whole winter with these symptoms. During the winter, the humidity was so high in the home that I had to throw out a mattress which became covered in mold. »

She does not receive a response. “I had a non-existent landlady. On my lease, his phone number didn’t work! » The couple paid $851 for a three and a half room apartment.

We contacted Suzanne Tremblay last Tuesday to get her point of view on this story. “The apartment is very decent. I put the file in the hands of my lawyer,” she simply said.

“Completely abandoned by the district”

M^me Da Silva ended up filing a complaint with the district at the end of July. She mentions to 311 that her door is left unlocked so that the inspectors can enter. The next day, a notice was left at his door: an inspector had come by in his absence. There is no name or telephone number on the document. M^me Da Silva is at this point convinced that her home has been inspected. She then receives no more news.

The tenant requires help from the housing committee. Annie Lapalme, from Entraide-logement Hochelaga-Maisonneuve, is requesting information from the borough. We don’t give him any news. In desperation, at the beginning of October, M^me Lapalme requests the intervention of the political attaché of MP Alexandre Leduc, Gabrielle Lauzon.

M^me Lauzon speaks to the district authorities and Marie-Pier Da Silva finally has news. His home was never inspected. On October 13, almost three months after his complaint, the accommodation was finally subject to an inspection.

In the documents of the inspection service that M^me Da Silva requested under the Freedom of Information Act, it is seen that the building was first visited by inspectors in April 2015. Reason: potential mold and mouse infestation. The file was closed a little over a year later.

In March 2017, new visit. “Balcony floors and exterior stairs in poor condition.” A notice of non-compliance is given. The owner has 30 days to comply. The file was closed three months later: the owner seemed to have carried out work.

And then, in July 2023, Marie-Pier Da Silva’s complaint was registered. “In my opinion, this is an urgent case,” notes the 311 agent who takes the call. You should not wait 10 days before making a request to the inspection service. »

On July 28, inspector Radia Zatout noticed the problems herself. “Presence of beef belly”, “hollowed out joints between the bricks”, a tenant on site which testifies to multiple water infiltrations. After that ?

“The dangerous elements were inspected without delay, the same day the request was created. That same day, the applicant (accommodation 3) was absent,” responds Julie Bellemare, spokesperson for the district.

Corrections were requested from the owner, assures Ms. Bellemare, and the inspectors came twice to verify that they had indeed been carried out. Municipal inspectors have no power over air quality, only over visible mold, specifies the district mayor’s chief of staff, Laurent Richer-Beaulieu. “We will nevertheless explore this question in the coming weeks, because the situation at 2130 Davidson shows that our “regulatory toolbox” for inspections is sometimes incomplete in certain respects,” he told us by email. No infraction report was given to the owner.

1^er last November, M^me Da Silva and her partner decided to flee this accommodation where they were suffocating. They have lived in Sherbrooke ever since. All their symptoms have disappeared since their move, she says.

We went to 2130 Davidson Street last Tuesday. In the building, which doesn’t look like much, there are still six tenants. Caroline Chartier has just moved into apartment 3, the one occupied by Marie-Pier Da Silva. The woman left another vermin-infested home in the borough. “The owner did absolutely nothing. »

She says she has had no respiratory problems so far.