About twenty tenants are fighting their landlord, who is trying to evict them to expand his apartment and rent them twice as much.
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“We don’t want to leave. “We love our building, we want to keep it, we don’t want to be forced to leave home and be sent to retirement homes because we can’t find somewhere to live,” says Edouard Fell, 70, who is 4 1/2 in the Rue Durocher for 14 years.
Of the eight tenants in his building, seven have received an eviction notice from their landlord, who wants an extension. They all decided to fight by appealing their eviction to the Administrative Housing Tribunal (TAL) and thus preventing their landlord from evicting them.
“He just wants to make money while we’ve been here a long time,” continues Mr. Fell, who pays $710 a month for his housing.
It is said that its owner bought the building in 2021 for $1.22 million before reselling it to his own company for $1.6 million a few months later.
Oldest
Almost all tenants have lived in the residential building for more than ten years. Some have been for more than 30 years, says Mr. Fell, who draws a small pension and lives off his savings.
“I am 70 years old, my neighbor is in his 70s and another is in his 85s. Two others are in their late 60s. We are a building with a senior community,” he explains.
For André Trépanier from the Parc-Extension action committee, it is clear that the owner has bad intentions. Especially since the evictions in the neighborhood have increased drastically in recent years due to the new building
“He says he wants to expand backwards, but he’s offered some tenants to pay more every month and told them they won’t get kicked out,” he says.
Same fight at Rosemont
In Rosemont, the same owner is faced with 15 tenants of two buildings who have also decided to contest the eviction notice he sent them for the same reason, explains Jean-Claude Laporte of the Rosemont Housing Committee.
“We’re in trouble because the borough’s statute prohibiting expansion is very clear if it’s an interior expansion. It’s just that the owner wants to enlarge it from behind, so it’s not framed,” he complains.
For Edouard Fell it is clear that the lack of political will to better protect tenants is responsible for this situation.
“The prime minister doesn’t care about the tenants, he doesn’t deserve to be the head of government,” he claims.
That’s why he, along with dozens of other tenants and a housing rights advocacy group, will demonstrate tomorrow at Montreal’s Parc subway station, specifically against the government bill’s removal of the lease allocation.
At the time of writing this article it was not possible to reach the owner.
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