A Montreal real estate speculator who boasted of having a “95% tenant eviction rate” on his website will have to lower his expectations: he has just been ordered to pay tens of thousands of dollars to residents whose lives he ruined for years.
Joseph Shaffer’s company has increased its illicit attempts to empty its building on rue Saint-Timothée, near the Village, the Administrative Housing Tribunal recently concluded.
PHOTO TAKEN FROM THE LS CAPITAL GROUP SITE
Joseph Shaffer
“The method used by the landlord constitutes a form of psychological pressure whose ultimate objective is to obtain the departure of as many tenants as possible,” lamented administrative judge Francine Jodoin.
For the landlord, all means are good to get the tenants to leave and to be able to undertake work without worrying about the people who live in the building and who, through their opposition, prevent the financial objective from being achieved as soon as possible. .
Administrative judge Francine Jodoin, of the Administrative Housing Tribunal
Between 2018 and 2023, five tenants who had refused his offers to leave the premises received three separate eviction notices with a view to carrying out as many projects, each time abandoned once a challenge was filed.
While renovating some vacant apartments into high-end housing, the owner transformed the rest of the building into a construction site and overlooked a major water leak in the roof.
“He infringed on the tenants’ right to remain in the premises or otherwise to their peaceful enjoyment in order to obtain that they leave the accommodation, thus contravening his obligation not to harass the tenants and to act in good faith », ruled the Court.
In the winter of 2020, for example, tenants had to get up “every 3 hours to empty the boilers”, according to their testimony. “They collected 40 liters per hour. The firefighters intervened. The roof had to be cleared of snow, which was done two weeks later. [Une locataire] installed a garden hose to collect water from the ceiling and redirected it into the bathtub of a vacant unit. Every time the firefighters came, the hose had to be reinstalled. »
“Carelessness”
“Mr. Shaffer has repeated several times, the presence of tenants in the building harms the efficiency and speed of the means capable of making the real estate investment profitable,” denounced administrative judge Jodoin. However, “the execution of necessary work in a building does not justify the eviction of tenants”.
Her attitude “looks like complete disregard for the rights of tenants who refuse to leave their accommodation despite the work undertaken,” she continued.
The tenants’ lawyer, Kimmyanne Brown, indicated in a telephone interview Friday that the judgment against Mr. Shaffer’s company totaled approximately $77,000.
My clients are relieved that there is an end to this battle and a recognition of what they have been through all these years. We are very satisfied with these decisions.
Me Kimmyanne Brown, tenant advocate
Her clients experienced “hell,” she lamented. “We managed to prove that it was all just a ploy to push them to leave their homes. »
The decisions show a significant psychological impact for certain tenants, with one even saying they suffered from “post-traumatic shock”. Others spoke of the stress and anxiety associated with the constant threat of eviction.
Mr. Shaffer’s company and his lawyer did not return calls. The Press.
“Insidious and dishonest practices”
This is not the first time that Mr. Shaffer’s attempts to evict tenants have been denounced by the courts.
Last May, the Administrative Housing Tribunal blamed him for trying to evict tenants with housing expansion notices when he had no intention of carrying out such work. Its objective: to turn them into luxury apartments, then put them back on the market at up to “three times” more expensive than before.
His company “knowingly attempted to put an end to tenants’ right to remain in the premises by sending them eviction notices that it knew were illegal,” concluded administrative judge Camille Champeval. She “contravened her obligations to exercise her rights according to the requirements of good faith”.
In February, a tenant on Saint-Timothée Street obtained nearly $25,000 in damages from one of Mr. Shaffer’s companies. She had agreed to be temporarily rehoused during work, but was now refused the right to return home.
“By using the temporary evacuation of the tenant from the accommodation to try to evict her permanently, the landlord commits a serious fault,” indicated the Court, affirming that it was a question of “renoviction”. “It is important to raise awareness among players in the rental market in Quebec that this is not an acceptable practice and that the consequences will be severe, in the context of a verdict relating to this type of action. » The amount that the landlord will have to pay will be able to convince owners not to use this type of “insidious and dishonest practices”.