2023-06-21 23:30:00
About twenty tenants are fighting against their landlord who is trying to evict them to expand his accommodation 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 our home and be sent to retirement homes because we can’t find accommodation”, indignant Edouard Fell, 70, who has lived in his 4 1/2 on rue Durocher for 14 years.
Of the eight tenants in his building, seven have received an eviction notice from their landlord who wishes to make extensions. All of them decided to fight by contesting their eviction at the Administrative Housing Tribunal (TAL) and thus prevent their landlord from kicking them out.
“All he wants is to make money, whereas we have been here for a long time,” continues Mr. Fell, who pays $710 a month for his accommodation.
It is that its owner bought the building in 2021 for 1.22 million dollars, before reselling it to his own numbered company for 1.6 million dollars a few months later.
Elders
In the residential building, almost all the tenants have lived there for more than ten years. Some, for more than 30 years, says Mr. Fell, who receives a small pension and survives on his savings.
“I am 70 years old, my neighbor is over 70 and another is 85. Two others are in their late sixties. We are a building with a senior community,” he explains.
For André Trépanier, of the Parc-Extension Action Committee, it is clear that the owner is showing bad faith. Especially since in the neighborhood, evictions have drastically increased in recent years with the construction of the new
“He says he wants to expand backwards, but he has offered some tenants to pay more each month, telling them they won’t be evicted,” he says.
Same fight in Rosemont
In Rosemont, the same owner faces 15 tenants of two buildings who have also decided to contest the eviction he sent them with the same reason, explains Jean-Claude Laporte, of the Rosemont Housing Committee.
“We’re in trouble because the borough’s by-law prohibiting expansions is very clear when it’s an interior expansion. Except that there, the owner wants to enlarge from the back and therefore it is not framed, ”he laments.
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 head of government,” he maintains.
It is for this reason that he will demonstrate at the Parc metro station in Montreal tomorrow, with dozens of other tenants and housing rights advocacy group, in particular against the withdrawal of the assignment of lease from the bill of government.
At the time of this writing, it has not been possible to reach the owner.
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