“They kicked us out”

The ex-owners of a residential building in Saint-Eustache would have obtained the departure of most of the tenants – including the elderly – before reselling it for a profit. The new owners have raised the rent of vacant apartments by several hundred dollars, without making any renovations, tenants say.

Frederik-Xavier Duhamel
The Press

“I was a tenant, then they kicked us out,” says Nicole Boisclair, who left the building on rue Saint-Laurent in Saint-Eustache last fall. “At the age I’m at, they pissed me off so much, it’s terrible,” adds the 77-year-old woman.

For any compensation, she says she was exempted from paying her last month’s rent, and received $900 to cover – partially – her moving costs. “I can’t believe it yet,” said the woman who had lived in the building for 25 years. “I’ve worked all my life to make room for myself, for when I retire, but this has demolished my whole life. »

Resale for profit

Paul-André Huard and Craig Herman bought the nine-unit building in October 2021 for $1,000,000, according to the land registry. They sold it last February – less than four months later – for $1,675,000. Reached at the telephone number of their company, Investissements Huard Herman, Paul-André Huard refused to answer questions from The Press. The two men did not respond to our subsequent calls.

Between these two transactions, current and former tenants with whom The Press spoke say that MM. Huard and Herman asked them to leave the premises under the pretext of major renovations to come in July 2022.

“They told me: ‘You know that if you don’t move, we’ll do repairs, then we’ll demolish your apartment,’ recalls Nicole Gauthier. They kept me from sleeping for a couple of weeks. »

The ex-landlords visited the tenants several times and asked them to sign a “lease termination agreement” offering to cover their moving costs and waive their last month’s rent. The Press got to see some of these generic agreements. The tenants did not, however, receive any notice of eviction, the other communications having been made orally.

The occupants of six out of nine dwellings would have agreed to leave the premises. The Press notably spoke with two former tenants, the three remaining tenants and a new resident of the building for this report.

M^me Gauthier, 61, initially saw it as an opportunity to move into a residence better suited to her needs, since she uses a walker and cannot climb stairs alone.

But after having suffered a refusal in a residence reserved for 70 years and over, she changed her mind. “I said to myself: I’m not moving anymore,” she says. I’m having trouble moving, I’m not going to move to worse than here. »

At the same time, the City intervened in November because a concrete slab had been torn out without a permit to decontaminate the ground following the extraction of an oil tank.

M^me Gauthier gave notice to Paul-André Huard and Craig Herman to “inform him about the very nature of the contamination […]to remedy this situation by doing the necessary work”, and reminded them of his right to remain in the premises.

“Then I, from then on, never heard from me again,” she says, until she was informed of the new recipients of her monthly checks.

To date, it is not known whether the soil has indeed been decontaminated or not. The City has not received confirmation, and the company hired by MM. Huard and Herman, Emphase Environnement, refused to answer questions from The Press on this subject.

Since then, M.^me Gauthier and the other tenants who resisted had their leases renewed by the new owners with modest rent increases, as if nothing had happened. The monthly rent for vacant units, on the other hand, has increased by hundreds of dollars.

That of M^me Boisclair, for example, has found a taker. His four and a half was costing him $648 a month. The new tenant, Luc Laurin, met on the spot, said to pay $1,000.

Although the Civil Code obliges landlords to “give the new tenant a notice indicating the lowest rent paid during the 12 months preceding the start of the lease”, Mr. Laurin did not know the rent paid by Ms.^me Boisclair before him.

Ethel Cudney, also 77, also left her apartment on Saint-Laurent Street, which she paid $690 a month. In April, his daughter, Anne-Marie Cudney, saw him advertised on Facebook for $1,000 a month. She kept a screenshot that The Press could see.

According to her, there have been no improvements in the apartment. The City of Saint-Eustache also indicates that there has been no request for a permit for renovations at this address recently.

A popular scheme

Professor Ünsal Özdilek, director of real estate programs at UQAM, explains that the value of a building is determined, among other things, by the income it can generate, ie the amount of rent. Here, “perhaps rents were low compared to market rents in the area, which were rising,” and successive landlords saw an opportunity to catch up by kicking everyone out, justifying the price hike of sale.

According to the Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation, the average rent for a two-bedroom apartment in the census metropolitan area of ​​Montreal, which includes Saint-Eustache, was $932 per month in 2021.

Mr. Özdilek maintains that this is a widespread scheme. “The problem is enormous, we sleep on gas,” he denounces, pointing out that tenants are often losers because they end up with negligible compensation and can hardly find similar accommodation at the same price.

The new owners, Schmuel Halpert and Shloma Silberman, declined interview requests from The Press. “We bought this building with six of the nine apartments available for rent and did some renovations, and gave it to rent to an agency”, we simply indicated by email, without answering more questions.

The real estate agent who posted the ad on Facebook, Marie Viscoso, says she did it to help a colleague, without wanting to name him. “I don’t know anything about the building really. Me, I was just having the doors opened, ”she assures us before refusing to answer the questions of The Press. However, she admits having been contacted by Mr.^me Cudney daughter following the publication of the ad. “I know it’s a bit of a flat story […], but I don’t want to get too involved. »

“The rest of us were fine. […], we had fun together, ”regrets Diane Bélisle, 74, speaking of her and her friends Nicole Boisclair and Ethel Cudney, who left the building. She says she refused the initial offer of compensation from MM. Huard and Herman, deeming it insufficient to cover his moving expenses. She negotiated with them until she learned that her building had once again changed hands.

“It looked like it had given me an emotional shock,” said Ms.^me Bélisle about the stress experienced last fall. “I’m always tired, life isn’t the same for me. I lost my friends, it really gave me a shock. »