Rental housing | Students cheated

Misleading ads. Questionable charges. And, at the end, a very bad surprise: a room that has nothing to do with what they had been promised.

Lea Carrier
The Press

“It’s a total scam. I was duped and manipulated,” says Antoan Georgiev.

The Bulgarian student opens the door to his accommodation, at 30^e floor of a tower on Guy Street in downtown Montreal.

Behind him, the living room has been divided into two rooms, separated by shelves and a plastic concertina door, with an opening over a foot in the ceiling.

Antoan Georgiev, who pays $700 a month, considers himself lucky: at least he has a window. The other “room”, no.

The Press visited five identical homes sublet by students with Harrington Housing. Six tenants (former and current), who have resided in three different buildings, in Montreal and Toronto, accuse the agency of having cheated them with advertisements they consider misleading and dubious fees.

Based in Toronto, Harrington Housing sublets furnished rooms in many major cities around the world, including New York, Washington, Boston and London.

In Montreal, the company displays more than 300 rooms on its site, distributed in many buildings, most located in the city center.

Its target clientele: students and young professionals who dream of living in “a top-of-the-range apartment at a price below that of the market”.

For smaller budgets, Harrington Housing offers its “Flex Plus” or “Flex Basic” option, a bedroom “separated from the rest of the suite by a clever library system”.

“You can enjoy complete privacy as well as quality furniture at a very reasonable price,” the agency writes.

Except that in reality, the rooms have nothing to do with the online ad, laments Thibault, who preferred not to give his last name.

“The photos on the site, I don’t know where they come from, but that has no connection,” says the French student.

In its announcement, Harrington Housing points out that the “library system does not completely isolate the area and there is a small gap at the top of the divider area”.

The agency also says the images are “presented for illustrative purposes” and recommends an in-person or virtual viewing.

What Antoan Georgiev had nevertheless done.

“That’s the definition of bad faith. They don’t care about anything. They just want your money,” he continues.

Rosalie Trigg, who resided for eight months in a building on Drummond Street, was also expecting a closed bedroom.

She eventually found herself sharing a 3-bedroom apartment… with 4 roommates.

“I had half the living room. The walls were cardboard. I could hear the girl on the other side typing on her computer keyboard,” said the Alberta student, who was paying $620 a month.

“As soon as I saw the room, I left. I didn’t even stay a night,” says Juliet Radic, a 20-year-old French student who had to find emergency accommodation with friends in Montreal.

Concordia University’s Housing and Employment Resource Center denounces this practice of adding rooms “with shelves, bookcases or curtains”.

In interview with The Pressa representative of Harrington Housing, who declined to be identified, maintained that there would be only “five or six” divided apartments left like the dwellings visited by The Pressand in a single building.

“Come back on 1^er September, and you won’t see any more. It was a bad decision […] and we don’t have them anymore. We started to remove them all, ”he defended himself.

A dwelling visited by The Press on Drummond Street was more in line with the announcement: the shelves went up to the ceiling and each room had a window.

questionable fees

The students also denounce dubious fees in their contract, which would be prohibited by law according to lawyers.

Indeed, Harrington Housing requires a security deposit of $500 in order to “reserve the room and cover any loss, excess cost or potential damage”.

From this sum, a mandatory minimum – and therefore non-refundable – deduction of $150 is withdrawn for “costs of installing bedding, cleaning services after the move and depreciation of furniture”. (At least one student reports never having received her deposit at the end of her contract, which is also demonstrated by email exchanges between the student and the agency consulted by The Press.)

At the signing of the contract, an amount of $200 is also required for “placement costs”.

Remember that in Quebec, a landlord cannot require any amount in advance – whether it is a deposit or placement fees – with the exception of the first rent.

However, and this is what Harrington Housing defends, their tenants do not sign a lease, but rather what the agency calls a “short-term cohabitation contract”.

A way to play with words to circumvent the law?

“It is not the title of the contract that dictates the applicable legislation, but rather the object of it,” argues Ms.^e Marc-André Émard, a Montreal legal aid lawyer specializing in housing law, who reviewed the contract.

“A for-profit business that is not a hotel and that rents accommodation or a room to an individual to reside there in return for rent enters into a residential lease agreement,” he explains.

The housing lawyer M^e Vincent LaBoissonnière adds: “All that emerges from the contract is a landlord-tenant relationship. If that’s not a lease, I wonder what is. »

In May, the Administrative Housing Tribunal ratified an out-of-court settlement between Harrington Housing and a tenant who was claiming reimbursement of a $500 deposit “illegally received by [l’agence] “, according to her.

“Those who sign with us are tenants. They have tenant rights. There’s no doubt about it,” admitted a Harrington Housing representative in an interview.

Asked about the deposit and placement fees, he remained very evasive, however, pointing to several competitors with the same practices.

“The whole landscape has changed. This is the new reality. It is always the market that leads, and the legal changes that follow later,” he added.

“I would be happy to go to court with someone to discuss it. »

students at risk

“They take advantage of foreign students, because we don’t know the local laws,” said Belican Alpaydın, a Turkish student who said he had a “horrible” experience with Harrington Housing.

Foreign students are indeed “doubly at risk” of abusive practices, recalls Laurent Levesque, general manager of the Work Unit for the establishment of student housing.

In addition to the urgency of finding housing in a saturated rental market, “they have no chance of knowing the rights and remedies of tenants”, he laments.