(Montreal) LGBTQ+ communities experience more discrimination when looking for housing. As Quebec struggles with a housing shortage, people of different sexual and gender diversity can find it even harder to find.
Posted at 3:13pm. Updated at 3:13 p.m.
Katrine Desautel’s The Canadian Press
According to the Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation (CMHC), the rental vacancy rate in all Quebec centers with 10,000 residents or more was 1.7% in the fall of 2022, with the equilibrium threshold at 3%.
Therefore, it is not already difficult for anyone to find an apartment, but people with a migration background, single parents or LGBTQ+ people are often denied an apartment because the owner prefers 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 in nature.
“We hear stories that people who experience this type of discrimination are not the first to be selected for placement for any reason,” says Ms Fortier.
Whether the home seeker is gay or transgender “is not a guarantee that they will pay their rent or that they will be a good tenant or not,” she argues.
A trans woman who prefers not to be named because of a proceeding before the Human Rights Commission experienced tremendous stress when looking for housing.
Having recently separated from his spouse, the person needed to find housing quickly. After three weeks of searching this spring, she found a place to sublet, but things went awry.
After signing the sublease documents, of which the person does not have a copy, the landlord wanted her to sign a new lease effective July 1st. “Even though he didn’t really have the right to ask me about it, I agreed anyway because I really needed a place to stay. »
In a telephone conversation with the owner, he is said to have said that he was thinking about renting the apartment to girls and that that did not calm him down. “I told her I’m a trans woman. »
The person found out they didn’t have the apartment when the previous tenant, for whom they wanted to buy some furniture, informed them that the owner had decided to rent it out 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. I cried 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 she frantically asked on the phone if the owner had any other apartments for rent and he replied: “Not for you”.
What this person went through, including the abuse of the pronoun, is an example of microaggression, Ms Fortier says. “For people who experience forms of discrimination, it can become commonplace,” she recalls.
A trans person might try to cover it up, and a gay person might avoid referring straight to their love life to avoid emphasizing that there might be a difference, Ms Fortier explains. They employ these defense mechanisms, but in this way they hide who they really are.
Difficult-to-use solutions
Aurélie Dauphinais, board member of Jeunesse Lambda, a Montreal-based nonprofit founded for and by young people in the LGBTQ+ community, believes the justice system is sometimes flawed.
“I wish I could say that the owners don’t discriminate based on gender or sexual identity. It’s illegal, but it’s still difficult to defend that right. So it’s possible for a landlord to realize that a person is transgender and doesn’t want them in their space,” she notes.
People who experience any form of housing-related discrimination can contact the Administrative Housing Tribunal or the Human Rights Commission.
Unfortunately, the way that the proof has to be presented – how to prove that there has been discrimination – is, shall we say, not really made for the tenants, because at the end of the day a landlord has to say really openly: ‘I don’t want that .” I am renting the apartment to you because you are transgender. It has to be that black and white for an appeal to be possible.
Celeste Trianon, involved with the Jeunesse Lambda organization
In her opinion, conducting inspections and introducing mandatory training for owners are solutions that could prevent discrimination. “Right now, the door is wide enough for someone to slip through the law, and frankly, that shouldn’t be the case,” Ms Trianon laments.
More LGBTQ+ homeless people
Population groups from the LGBTQ+ community are also overrepresented in the picture of homelessness.
“The social disadvantage associated with transphobia and homophobia can lead to homelessness,” according to a 2022 document from the Quebec Department of Health titled “Homelessness in Quebec – Second Portrait”.
In its 2018 Safety in Public and Private Spaces survey, Statistics Canada states that “LGBTQ2+ individuals are more likely than others to have experienced some form of homelessness or housing insecurity”. They were three times more likely to be in an emergency shelter or spend the night away from home than straight cisgender Canadians, 6% versus 2%.
In addition to the common challenges associated with homelessness, LGBTQ+ people have their own challenges. “For example, it will not necessarily be possible for a trans woman to go to a women’s shelter or a women’s hostel,” says Aurélie Dauphinais.
“There remains a population that is at risk. She can face discrimination, whether from residents of shelters or sometimes, unfortunately, from workers. »
Ms Dauphinais adds that shelters are increasingly adopting protocols to better accommodate these people. “There remains a risk of violence,” she nuances. Working in a shelter myself, I’ve never seen physical violence, but I’ve heard a lot of derogatory comments against users who are overtly LGBTQ+. »
Ms Trianon also criticizes the resources that are nevertheless being made available to help. “I see young people leaving youth centers or group homes to be more assertive about their gender identity, which proves that sometimes even the social safety net is so sharp,” she says.
Jeunesse Lambda’s two wives want Montreal to create a property dedicated exclusively to LGBTQ+ communities. There is currently no shelter or shelter exclusively for LGBTQ+ homeless people in Quebec. In Ontario, the YMCA’s Sprott House in Toronto, the first shelter for LGBTQ2S youth, opened in 2015.