At the request of the City of Montreal, tenants returned at the beginning of the week to a building that fell prey to flames last Thursday, after being housed for three days in a hotel by the Red Cross. However, this building is not habitable, by its owner’s own admission.
The Red Cross took care of 19 tenants Thursday afternoon, after a fire on the top floor of the 29-unit building, located in Mercier–Hochelaga-Maisonneuve, forced the evacuation by the Fire Safety Service from Montreal (SIM), around 6 a.m. They all had access to emergency accommodation and food and clothing assistance for 72 hours.
No one was injured in the fire, but it left a gaping hole in the ceiling of the three-story building, where a unit caught fire. Rainfall has since caused water damage to some homes, while some empty apartments have been filled with construction debris, according to several testimonies and photos collected by The duty, who visited the site last Thursday as well as this Wednesday. Tenants were also deprived of hot water until late Wednesday in this building, where a smell of charred wood continues to float in the air.
However, after a visit carried out by its inspectors earlier this week, the borough of Mercier–Hochelaga-Maisonneuve judged that this building is habitable, with the exception of five dwellings on the top floor damaged by the fire which did not were however not busy. All the tenants of the building have returned to the premises in the last few days, some as early as Saturday.
“The City refused my extension to the hotel because they told me: if there is electricity and water, you can return there,” Michel Séguin, who occupies since 2017 a one-bedroom apartment in this building. “I explained to the City that I do not have hot water and that my home is completely invaded by bedbugs […] It was of no interest to them. They sent me home anyway. »
A situation that surprises the owner of the building, Henry Zavriyev. “If you look at other buildings that have suffered a similar situation, the tenants never return,” says Mr. Zavriyev, who says he is simply doing “what the City asks us.” This is how the owner summarily plugged the holes in the ceiling of the building to limit the flow of water, at the request of the district.
“I have never seen it said that a building in such a state is habitable,” says the organizer of the BAILS Committee, Annie Lapalme, who regularly supports tenants in vulnerable situations in the borough.
“It’s not livable”
The state of the building in recent days also seems to contravene several articles of the Regulation respecting the sanitation and maintenance of the City’s housing, noted The duty. This mentions in particular that the roof of a building must be “watertight” and that the presence of vermin and the conditions favoring their “proliferation” must be eliminated.
“When it rains, the water collects in my apartment. It’s not livable! » says Mathieu Valade, whose bathroom has been flooded a few times since the fire.
The City’s regulations also provide that it can order the closure or evacuation of a building if it deems it unsanitary or unsafe. An option that the district does not rule out, while remaining cautious. “What I want to avoid is that people end up on the street,” continued Maisonneuve–Longue-Pointe district councilor Alia Hassan-Cournol. The City’s resources are, however, limited due to the lack of funding from Quebec dedicated to the creation of social and affordable housing, continued the elected official.
As for the cause of the fire, it remains unknown. “It really is in line with an accidental cause,” however, affirmed in an interview last Friday the head of the fire section at the SIM, Sylvain Jalbert.
A building under construction
The building in question was sold for the sum of $2.85 million on August 14 to the company Gestion Roxbury Capitale, owned by Mr. Zavriyev, who has acquired numerous rental buildings in the metropolis in recent years.
Since then, the owner has been busy renovating the vacant units in this building. “We often see people returning with construction materials. We hear them banging all night,” said Marc-Antoine Michaud, a student in his mid-twenties.
Several tenants, whose rent ranges between 600 and 700 dollars per month, have also signed an agreement in the last few days to terminate their lease with Mr. Zavriyev’s company, which offered them several thousand dollars in return. and the possibility of staying in their accommodation free of charge for six months. These tenants have until 1er March to leave their apartment.
“They make arrangements for us to set aside the camp, to look for accommodation in the middle of a housing crisis. I have a social assistance check, but it’s not even enough for most of the apartments that are available,” confided, in tears, a tenant in her sixties who requested anonymity because she signed a confidentiality agreement with its owner.
The agreement in question, which The duty was able to consult, also mentions that its “one and only aim is to buy peace and avoid the costs and inconveniences of litigation”.
“The plan is to own the building, renovate it and be a good landlord for our tenants while improving the quality of the rental stock in Montreal,” argues Henry Zavriyev.