Tenants of a rooming house in Plateau Mont-Royal fear being evicted by the new owners, who have already carried out work without a permit. The latter say they want to keep the vocation of the building, despite notices to the contrary served on the tenants.
Posted at 5:00 a.m.
“Major work will be carried out at this address with the aim of restoring it to its original vocation, that of a single apartment”, can we read in a notice to the tenants of 4232, avenue Christophe-Colomb posted at the end of Last year.
4232 is the ground floor of a three-level building which until recently had 21 rooms, or seven per level.
“We offer the possibility to interested parties to take another accommodation in the building”, indicates another opinion. “If you do not choose to take this offer, it is possible that in the coming weeks or months the structural work and/or change of vocation of the building will oblige us to ask you to leave. »
“I think she wants to kick us out to make a condo or those things,” sighed Normand Léveillé, who has lived at 4232 for 11 years. He considered moving to the third, 4228, in a room that would have cost him $140 more per month, before changing his mind. Does he think he can stay? “That’s what I wonder. »
PHOTO MARTIN TREMBLAY, THE PRESS
Normand Léveillé has been renting a room for 11 years in the building on rue Christophe-Colomb, in Montreal.
“She” is Ariane Cordeau, who bought the building with her husband, Frédéric Allali, last fall. It was then displayed at a price of $1,975,000.
“What I understood was that the first floor had to become an apartment, the people who were there, they were moving,” said Alain Isabelle, a tenant on the second floor, 4230, who lived on the street before moving. find this accommodation. “We were told that if you are a smoker, you were going to be kicked out, some were told to clean their place, otherwise they were going to be kicked out. Let’s say there was a little pressure. »
However, rooming houses are now protected in the Plateau, as in other boroughs, where they are becoming increasingly rare.
“No Renovations”
In response to the notices, another long-time tenant of 4232, Wojtek Donimirski, consulted the Plateau Mont-Royal Housing Committee and circulated a petition in the neighborhood “against the transformation of the building”.
“It seems obvious to us that they bought this without intending to keep a rooming house. It won’t be profitable enough for them,” said Vicky Langevin, a community organizer with the Comité Logement du Plateau.
But the new owners now maintain that they do not want to change the vocation of the building, despite the notices they have signed. “We don’t want to make any renovictions. Doing renovations would mean that we will make less money, whereas we bought this precisely because there are 20 homes, ”assured Mr. Allali.
He and his spouse admitted to having had discussions with certain lodgers concerning smoking and the sanitation of the premises, which other tenants allegedly complained about. They also said they had run into trouble with tenants allegedly struggling with mental health issues.
Regarding the more expensive accommodation offered to Mr. Léveillé, Mr. Allali noted that he has a discount in his current room because he was the building’s concierge, a position he no longer holds.
Works for a room that is too small
The co-owner speaks of 20 apartments, and not 21, since work has joined two rooms of 4230, one of them being too small to be rented, according to him. This work, carried out without a permit, led to the posting by the City of an order to stop the work last March.
“We did not need a permit for this work, it was simply a renovation of an apartment,” defended Mr. Allali, who is a lawyer. It was the need for structural work, discovered during these “renovations”, which led to the intervention of the City and the invitation to the tenants of the ground floor to leave the premises, according to him.
“A notice of non-compliance was issued for carrying out unauthorized work that did not comply with the regulations on 2and floor of the rooming house. (They converted two bedrooms into housing),” said Geneviève Allard, spokesperson for the Plateau-Mont-Royal borough, by email.
“The borough does not see any reason that could justify the owner obtaining a waiver for his project,” she added following a meeting between the borough and the owners on Tuesday.
The illegally furnished accommodation must be converted into a bedroom and no interior work may be carried out without first obtaining a permit.
Geneviève Allard, spokesperson for the Plateau-Mont-Royal borough
As for the structural work, a permit application is “currently under consideration for work in the basement and on the ground floor”, said the spokesperson.
Mme Langevin remains skeptical. “It’s not impossible that a building needs work that sometimes requires temporary relocation of tenants,” she acknowledged. But “often, it’s a slightly more subtle way of convincing tenants that it’s going to be complicated […]that it would be better to terminate the lease”.