The City of Montreal wants to better equip tenants with their rights regarding evictions and housing repossessions. Starting Monday, an awareness campaign will be deployed on the City’s website and social networks. The goal of the exercise: to ensure that tenants have information “in simple language and all in the same place”, specifies Benoit Dorais, vice-president of the executive committee and responsible for housing, in an interview At Duty.
Are you entitled to compensation if you receive an eviction notice? Under what conditions is a housing recovery possible? What information should be included in the notice sent to tenants? So many questions that the City will try to answer clearly and concisely. If necessary, citizens will be redirected to “the right resources”, notably the Administrative Housing Tribunal, Éducaloi and organizations such as the Popular Action Front in Urban Redevelopment and the Regroupment of Housing Committees and Tenant Associations of Quebec.
The City launches its awareness campaign in December since a large portion of leases expire on June 30 and notices of eviction and repossession of housing must be sent six months in advance. The municipality therefore wishes to give tenants who receive such a notice the opportunity to obtain adequate information to decide what action to take.
“At the moment, in the middle of the housing crisis, the best place is really to stay at home if your accommodation is completely adequate and corresponds to your income and your needs,” recognizes Mr. Dorais. However, knowing that if a tenant household has to move, it is likely to face a considerable rent increase, the City “basically wants to ensure that tenants have the right information [et] that we respect their rights,” he explains.
“Not because the owners are all malicious, far from it,” adds Mr. Dorais. However, he said he felt the need to clarify the rules regarding housing by speaking to citizens, who denounce the phenomenon of renovictions and the various tactics used to evict them.
Mr. Dorais regrets that certain companies are “financializing housing” and offering substantial amounts to tenants to leave their homes, only to then increase the rent. Some poorly informed tenants may be tempted to accept, without necessarily knowing their options. “There are too many people currently who are vulnerable because they do not know their rights,” says Benoit Dorais.
Obviously, such an initiative will not be enough to curb all the reprehensible behavior of certain owners. “It’s a cocktail of different measures which will ensure that we will be able to fight [ces] stratagems,” explains the elected official.
Called to comment on the changes to the transfer of lease, currently being discussed in Quebec, Mr. Dorais remains cautious. “We will see in the final bill,” he said. We must not bully owners, but it must not be at the expense of tenants. »
Certified “responsible” owners
In February 2022, the City of Montreal revealed the details of the future mandatory “responsible owner” certification, which was to come into force this year. This measure must ensure that managers of rental buildings with eight or more units must prove that each of the rental units in their building is not unsanitary or faced with safety issues, in addition to having to disclose the rent for their rental units.
The City now plans to implement the first phase of the project after the holidays. “What this aims to do is to have significantly more data on the real estate stock,” explains Benoit Dorais. For example, at the moment, the City knows the value and surface area of a building, but does not know the composition of the housing. “Is it a 4 and a half inside, or is it a little 6 and a half? “. For the moment, it is impossible to know, just like the state of the buildings, illustrates Mr. Dorais.
The data collected through certification will be especially useful “to be able to deploy better public policies,” according to Mr. Dorais, who assures that this project is “a first.” He explains the project deadlines by the complexity of developing the collection of such a large volume of information.
Executive Committee
Luc Rabouin, the mayor of Plateau-Mont-Royal, has served as president of the executive committee since the resignation of Dominique Ollivier in mid-November due to excessive spending when she headed the Office de consultation publique de Montréal . Benoit Dorais took over the finance and property assessment file.
A successor to Mme Ollivier should be announced within a few weeks, or even at the beginning of 2024, according to Mr. Dorais. In the meantime, “I presented the budget, defended the budget and I will continue to defend it”, adds the one who had to replace the former holder of the position two days before the presentation of the City budget, on November 15 .