Low-rent housing | Tenants in debt without their knowledge

Not knowing the new amount of their rent due to delays accumulated at the Office municipal d’habitation de Montréal in renewing leases, thousands of HLM residents risk finding themselves in default of payment.

Lila Dussault
The Press

In default of payment for an “administrative derailment”

Thousands of low-income Montreal households are unknowingly getting into debt due to backlogs at the Office municipal d’habitation de Montréal (OMHM), an “administrative derailment” that is causing a great deal of distress, according to the Residents’ Committee of HLM.

A total of 3,065 leases are late in their renewal process at the Office municipal d’habitation de Montréal, learned The Press. Of this number, 50% expired in June and July 2022, 15% from January to June 2022 and 35% have been late since 2021, according to Mathieu Vachon, director of the OMHM’s communications department.

There are therefore thousands of residents of low-rent housing who are not informed in time of the new amount of their rent, which is calculated based on the income of the previous year. Unable to know how much to pay, they risk accumulating debt.

“I know dozens of tenants who have found themselves in default of payment, when it was the fault of the Municipal Office [d’habitation de Montréal] says Robert Pilon, coordinator of the Federation of Low-Rental Housing Tenants of Quebec (FLHLMQ).

Last September, an audit by the Société d’habitation du Québec on the OMHM, obtained under the Access to Information Act and viewed by The Pressalready observed that the public body had “several delays for lease renewals, which implies that some tenants do not pay the real cost of their housing”.

However, in the midst of the rent crisis, the specter of an eviction is feared, according to testimonies collected by The Press. Especially since many tenants have struggled to provide proof of income and contact the rental agents at the OMHM, without success.

“It’s their fault”

“I hadn’t yet received my new lease, but they sent me the invoice: $2,320 late,” complains Monique Proulx, resident of a HLM in Rosemont. His lease renewal was due on the 1^er April 2021, but she did not receive her notice until a year later, on March 30, 2022, she claims.

Recipient of last-resort financial assistance, the 59-year-old lady lives with her son who works as a kitchen assistant. Its revenues had increased significantly in 2021.

Monique Proulx expected a rent increase, but she didn’t know by how much. She provided the necessary documentation for her file on several occasions, by hand. She repaid her debt by dipping into her son’s income and tightening her belt (a lot). Other people in her building owed amounts ranging from $300 to $400, she recalls.

And she is far from the only one. “We regularly receive distress calls from tenants who suddenly receive a letter, sometimes even from a bailiff, advising them of a late payment of rent and the fact that their file is being forwarded to a collection agent, so that they have not received any notice,” reads a letter sent last February to the OMHM Board of Directors by Richard Gagné, president of the HLM Residents’ Advisory Committee.

“When panicked tenants try to reach their rental agent, their voicemail boxes are full and they receive no response to their emails, which increases [leur] feeling of powerlessness”, also denounces Mr. Gagné.

The OMHM recognizes the problem

“Indeed, the OMHM has experienced some delay in renewing leases since last year,” acknowledged the public body in an email sent to The Press tuesday.

Several reasons, in particular the upheavals caused by the pandemic and the shortage of manpower, explain the delays, supports Mathieu Vachon, director of the communications department. A restructuring of the OMHM on the eve of the pandemic also accentuated the phenomenon, according to a letter from the director general, Danielle Cécile, sent last February to Richard Gagné.

A lack of cooperation on the part of certain tenants to provide their documents can also slow down the process. Of the 3,000 late files at the moment, 500 are because households refuse to provide the necessary documents, according to Mr. Vachon.

Since February, the Office has set up a system to prevent collection letters from being systematically sent to tenants. Payment agreements are also put in place in case of debt.

No evictions… or almost

The Office municipal d’habitation de Montréal (OMHM) claims not to have evicted HLM tenants in default of payment, but the 16,000 housing units subsidized by a rent supplement program (PSL) are excluded from this assessment.

This is the case of Michele Rock, that The Press had met shortly after the 1^er July, when she was about to be evicted from her accommodation. We followed up with her afterwards, to find that her situation is very similar to that of thousands of other OMHM tenants.

In 2019, Michele Rock’s spouse moved with her, to her subsidized apartment located in the Fusion Verte solidarity housing cooperative, in the east end of Montreal.

Michele Rock claims to have immediately informed social assistance of this new cohabitation with her spouse in 2019. Her income also increased from December 2019, according to her bank statements, that The Press was able to consult.

She then tried to contact her OMHM rental agent, responsible for her subsidy.

“A month passes, no news. Two months, no news. We’re starting the third month, it’s starting to bother me, but [l’agente] was quite hard to reach. We left him messages, and messages, and messages. She never sent me any documents. When I came to call her back afterwards, it was another person. »

rent paid

In the meantime, Michele Rock pays her share of rent to the Green Fusion Co-op every month, according to her bank statements. She says she learned that she was in default during a conversation in the hallway with managers of her cooperative.

When he renewed his lease in October 2020, his rent almost doubled, but M^me Rock claims she was never notified. According to the judgment of the Administrative Housing Tribunal rendered in December 2021 by Judge Claude Fournier and ordering his eviction, it is indicated that his lease began in October 2020.

M^me Rock had only paid a portion of his rent for the months of October, November and December. She had therefore accumulated a debt of $684, without her knowing it.

What’s more, M.^me Rock maintains that his attempts to make a payment arrangement with his landlord never bore fruit. The housing co-op had not responded to The Press at the time of this writing.

Michele Rock is now staying with her mother. Her son has been placed and her spouse is hospitalized. As for her cats, they are temporarily housed at the SPCA.

Beneficiaries of a PSL excluded

The OMHM affirms that “no HLM tenant has had a case opened at the Administrative Housing Tribunal because of the delays in renewing the leases”.

However, tenants like M^me Rock benefiting from a rent supplement program (PSL) – nearly 16,000 households in Montreal – are not counted in this balance sheet.

“When tenants default on their obligations, it is the landlords who open files with the TAL,” explains Mathieu Vachon, director of the OMHM’s communications department. “We ask landlords to notify us when there is a default in payment to ensure that it is not due to a delay in renewing the lease on the OMHM side. »

Currently, M.^me Rock, in addition to having lost his home, is no longer eligible for any OMHM subsidy until his debt is repaid, up to a maximum of 10 years.