A commotion has been going on since Friday morning to try to secure the future of a dozen tenants with intellectual disabilities or autism spectrum disorder. Threatened with eviction because the organization with a troubled past housing them has accumulated several months of unpaid rent at a parish that is part of the Diocese of Montreal, the tenants still do not know where they will sleep tonight.
The community organization Les Foyers de la création, created in 2012, occupies premises belonging to the parish of Saint-Pierre-Claver, in the Plateau-Mont-Royal borough. This organization, as defined in the Quebec Enterprise Register, is intended as a place of accommodation for people with an intellectual disability or an autism spectrum disorder. The rent offered is $900, according to multiple sources, and includes meal assistance and housekeeping.
The dozen tenants who each occupy a room there are however threatened with eviction. The organization has indeed received a bailiff’s letter Tuesday afternoon giving it three days, until Friday noon, to reimburse the nine months of unpaid rent to the parish of Saint-Pierre-Claver, member of the Diocese of Montreal. . Since the organization was unable to repay this sum of more than $66,600, it found itself up against a wall. And its tenants too.
A few minutes after the arrival of the To have to at the scene, around 10 a.m. Friday morning, several workers, including social workers, attached in particular to the CIUSSS du Centre-Sud-de-l’île de Montréal, gradually arrived at the premises of the organization, located in the church Saint-Pierre-Claver, following a report that did not come from the Foyers de la création, as confirmed by its management.
These workers from the health network were dispatched to the site to meet the organization’s tenants one by one to try to find them a place to stay this evening. Some then told them of their dismay at the unknown that awaited them.
Lack of funds
The organization, of which The duty spoke to several volunteer members of the management Thursday evening, claims to have done everything to find the necessary sums to reimburse the rents due, in vain. The government of Quebec, say representatives of the organization, has refused all their recent requests for funding.
Joined by The duty, the Ministry of Health and Social Services (MSSS) has confirmed that the health network currently has “no contract or agreement to entrust users to the Foyers de la Création”. A situation that would be linked to the problematic past of this organization. “There have been in the past [des ententes avec le MSSS] and these were terminated following an investigation which revealed that the safety of those accommodated was compromised,” the ministry said. The organization therefore does not qualify for public funding from the MSSS, we add.
However, the ministry, which has been alerted to the imminent closure of the organization’s premises, assures us that it is acting “quickly” in order to avoid “breakdowns in service” and to “ensure that very vulnerable people find themselves without accommodation”.
More details will follow.