More and more Quebec tenants are complaining regarding being harassed by landlords, who want them to leave to rent their more expensive accommodation.
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“What we notice, particularly in cases of intimidation, is that it is owner-occupiers who want to get rid of the tenant and who will make noise, wake the tenant up in the middle of the night,” explains Sylvie Lavigne, who has worked at the Petite Patrie Housing Committee for nearly 27 years.
It can be nighttime noise, abusive noises, comments and even aggressive gestures. In these cases, the victims often have difficulty gathering the evidence necessary for the administrative housing tribunal.
“When you bully someone, you don’t do it in front of the general public, you do it when the person is alone, so it doesn’t really leave a mark and it’s very difficult for the tenant to prove it to the TAL “, adds M.me Lavigne who points out that neighbors rarely cooperate.
At the level of the law, it can be very difficult to dispose of a good tenant, so intimidation becomes a formidable weapon.
Cas d’intimidation
It’s hell that lives a resident of the Villeray district who confided in the Journal regarding his situation. Through her testimony, she hopes to change things.
“They make me live from torture, they prevent me from sleeping”, launches the knotted throat the one who insisted on remaining anonymous for fear of reprisals.
Installed in her home for ten years, she sees the prices of apartments skyrocket in her neighborhood, but she counted herself lucky not to be affected, she who has always had a good relationship with her landlord. This was the case before everything changed last December.
For no good reason, his landlady started making noise at night a few times a week. When the lady decided to confront her, the landlady denied and suggested leaving the accommodation if she was not happy.
Since then, the same scenario repeats itself night following night and the routine is always the same.
“She starts moving furniture in the early hours of the morning, she drops heavy objects and knocks on the walls,” whispers the tenant who feared that her landlord overheard the conversation.
On sick leave since last December, she can no longer sleep and is unable to recover from the illness.
“It’s a nightmare, I had operations, radiotherapy treatments and what I’m going through right now is even worse,” adds the lady who is seriously ill.
All she wants now is to be able to start sleeping once more, but also to prevent other tenants from finding themselves in this situation. She would like to see stricter regulations for owners and more interventions in the field, in particular to obtain proof of registration.
Background
Stories like this, the group of housing committees and tenant associations of Quebec hears regularly.
“In cases of harassment there are not many solutions, they tolerate it, but we often see tenants fall into depression because they feel misunderstood, that they have no resources, that they call the police and when the agents show up at the owner’s, she pretends to be in bed,” says Sylvie Lavigne of the Petite Patrie Housing Committee.
Another woman presented herself to the Housing Committee of La Petite Patrie with a very similar case, she that her landlord harassed her to see her leave the housing where she had lived for 10 years to finally increase it.
And that’s what happened following she left, the owner made major renovations to raise the price of rent from $500 to $2,900.
The average price of housing for rent on the island of Montreal is $1,800 according to several advertisements consulted on social networks and this price can drastically increase for neighborhoods in demand such as Griffintown or the Plateau.
For landlords, the lure of profit can encourage them to use several schemes such as renovitions or abusive increases, but some go so far as to intimidate their tenants who have been there for several years in order to get rid of them and be able to double the price. of their accommodation.
“It’s a difficult context for tenants and we see that it is conducive to various schemes on the part of landlords,” said Benoit Dorais, Vice-President of the executive committee.
This is an issue related to the housing crisis that the city of Montreal says it wants to tackle by putting in place measures to protect tenants, such as “a modification of the civil code in order to reverse the burden of proof” as well as creating more affordable housing.
It should be noted that between 2021-2022, more than 8,480 appeals were sent to the Administrative Housing Tribunal (TAL), for this same period, the waiting period for all categories included was 3.9 months of waiting.
