(Montreal) LGBTQ+ communities are more likely to experience discrimination when it comes to finding housing. With Quebec struggling with a housing shortage, the search can be even more difficult for people of sexual and gender diversity.
According to the Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation (CMHC), in the fall of 2022, the rental housing vacancy rate for all centers of 10,000 or more inhabitants in Quebec was 1.7%, the equilibrium threshold being set at 3%.
It is therefore already difficult for anyone to find housing, but people with an immigrant background, single-parent families or LGBTQ+ people are often refused housing because the owner will prefer another candidate.
The executive director of the Abitibi-Témiscamingue Sexual Diversity Aid Coalition, Julie Fortier, explains that the forms of discrimination experienced by people in the LGBTQ+ community are often informal.
“We hear stories that for no reason people who experience this kind of discrimination will not be chosen first for housing,” said Ms.me Fortier.
Whether the person looking for housing is homosexual or trans, “this is not what will ensure that they will pay their rent or that they will be good tenants or not,” she argues.
A trans woman, who prefers not to have her name mentioned due to proceedings with the Human Rights Commission, experienced enormous stress when looking for housing.
Having recently separated from her spouse, the person had to find housing quickly. After three weeks of searching this spring, she found a place to sublet, but things turned sour.
After signing the sublease documents, of which the person does not have a copy, the landlord wanted her to sign a new lease for the 1er July. “Even though it’s not really something he had the right to ask me, I still agreed because I really needed accommodation. »
In conversation on the phone with the owner, the latter would have said that he thought of renting the apartment to girls and that it did not put him at ease. “I told her that I am a trans woman. »
The person learned that she did not have the apartment when the previous tenant, for whom she was planning to buy some furniture, told her that the owner had decided to rent to someone else.
“I called the owner. On the phone, he just called me by my old name, I asked him several times to call me by my current name and he didn’t want to know anything. I was crying on the phone, I had nowhere else to go. Miraculously, I found another apartment the same day I had to move to the previous apartment,” says the person.
She adds that on the phone, she asked, in desperation, if the owner had other apartments to rent and he replied: “not for you”.
What this person went through, including the misuse of the pronoun, is an example of microaggression, says Ms.me Fortier. “For people who experience forms of discrimination, it can become daily,” she recalls.
A trans person might try to cover it up and a gay person might avoid referring to their love life precisely so as not to highlight that there might be a difference, explains Ms.me Fortier. They apply these defense mechanisms, but in this way they hide who they really are.
Difficult to apply solutions
Aurélie Dauphinais, member of the board of directors of Jeunesse Lambda, a Montreal non-profit organization created for and by young people in the LGBTQ+ community, believes that the justice system is sometimes lacking.
“I wish I could say the owners don’t discriminate based on gender or sexual identity. It’s illegal, but it’s still hard to be able to defend this right. So it’s possible that a landlord notices that a person is transgender and does not want to have them in their accommodation, ”she mentions.
People who experience any form of discrimination related to housing can turn to the Administrative Housing Tribunal or the Human Rights Commission.
Unfortunately, the way in which the proof must be established – how you can prove that there is discrimination – let’s say it’s not really done for the tenants, because in the end a landlord really has to say openly: “I don’t want to rent the apartment to you because you are a transgender person.” It must be that black and white for an appeal to be possible.
Celeste Trianon, involved with the organization Jeunesse Lambda
According to her, carrying out inspections and implementing mandatory training for owners are solutions that could prevent discrimination. “Currently the door is open enough for a person to slip through the law and honestly it shouldn’t be like that,” laments M.me Trianon.
More LGBTQ+ homeless people
Populations from the LGBTQ+ community are also overrepresented in the portrait of homelessness.
“The social deprivation associated with transphobia and homophobia can lead to homelessness,” states a 2022 document from the Quebec Ministry of Health titled Homelessness in Quebec – Second portrait.
In its 2018 Survey of Safety in Public and Private Spaces, Statistics Canada indicates that “LGBTQ2+ people are more likely than others to have experienced one of the forms of homelessness or housing insecurity” . They were three times more often housed in an emergency shelter or spent the night away from home than straight cisgender Canadians, 6% versus 2%.
In addition to the general challenges related to homelessness, LGBTQ+ people have their own set of difficulties. “For example, a trans woman will not necessarily be able to go to a women’s shelter or a women’s dormitory,” says Aurélie Dauphinais.
“It remains a population that is vulnerable. She may be faced with discrimination, whether from users in shelters or even sometimes from workers, unfortunately. »
Mme Dauphinais adds that shelters are increasingly establishing protocols to better accommodate these people. “It remains a risk of violence, she nuances. Being a worker in a shelter myself, I have never seen physical violence, but I have heard a lot of derogatory comments against users who are visibly LGBTQ+. »
Mme Trianon is also critical of the resources that are nevertheless put in place to help. “I see young people leaving youth centers or group homes to be able to better assert themselves in their gender identity, which proves that sometimes even the social safety net is as if it were sharp,” says- She.
The two women involved with Jeunesse Lambda want a shelter dedicated exclusively to LGBTQ+ populations to see the light of day in Montreal. Currently, there is no shelter or lodging house exclusive to LGBTQ+ homeless people in Quebec. In Ontario, Toronto’s YMCA’s Sprott House, the first shelter for LGBTQ2S youth, has been open since 2015.