by KRISTIAN GRAVENOR

Getting kicked out of an apartment is an urban ritual of humiliation that happens more often than you might imagine.

Fall 21 days behind on your rent and you’ll get a notice to appear at the rental board a few weeks later. If you haven’t got all the missing cash by then, it’s sayonara. You’re ordered out and your salary gets seized for back rent.

Soon you’re dejectedly gazing at your boots as movers launch your Ikea futon onto the slushy sidewalk.

Thankfully, we have a network of government-funded subsidized apartment units for those with low incomes.

They’re set up to be foolproof. You pay a quarter of whatever you earn. Nine of 10 subsidized tenants have the funds deducted directly out of their account, so there’s little opportunity to screw up. The buildings are newish and well maintained, and there’s no quibbling with quarrelsome slumlords. Something like 15,000 Montrealers are on the waiting list for such city-run units. You get in and your worries are over.

Some public housing offers posh elements. Habitations Jeanne-Mance have ample onsight parking. It’s a relief to know that our downtrodden have-nots living a hand-to-mouth existence don’t have to worry about their parking spots.

And yet every year, a couple hundred subsidized tenants manage to get the boot.

Take Beverly Howe. She was evicted from a $510 apartment near Loyola campus in 2003 and ended up with a subsidized $230 place on Connaught. She was evicted from there for non-payment and ended up in city housing on Richmond, where she again failed to pay the $287 rent. After a reprieve, she was nailed for non-payment for the fourth time in two years and evicted last April. Howe tried to have the last eviction overturned, claiming that she never received the notice to appear at the rental board. That tactic didn’t work; it never does.

Other Montrealers who lost cheap, subsidized apartments last year include Romial Lacoste, who was booted from his subsidized apartment at Hutchison and Jean-Talon for failing to make his paltry $158 rent. Sona Manukyan had a $196 apartment in Little Burgundy. Kadar Adane Nour lived in a place at Guy and Notre-Dame and paid $157, same with Donna McTavish paying $164 nearby. Randolph Doyle had a $176 unit on Ropery in the Point, Helen Killam was paying $188 on Lajeunesse, Sire Berete paid $160 per month to live on de Gaspé; and Lynn Reid had a $191 unit on Mullins. All of these failed to come up with crazy cheap rents last year and got tossed out.

I sympathize with those who have money problems. But if you can’t make a rent of $6 a day in this town, you’ve got to seriously re-evaluate your accounting practices.

The city doesn’t hesitate to pull the trigger for other issues as well. In Verdun, a tenant was denounced for having too many visitors. Neighbours suspected drugs and prostitution. There was no hard evidence, but she had a prior record for drug dealing, so a judge sent her packing last year.

Van Vinh Vu, who enjoys a subsidized unit on Poupart Ave., escaped expulsion last July when a judge ordered him to stop pestering his neighbours and putting pornographic photos on his door.

Roger Robidoux, who was evicted for non-payment of his $152 city-funded rent in 1999, attempted to sue the city for tossing out his goods. He lost last summer.

What happens to people who get evicted from subsidized public housing? Sadly, I imagine that they start looking at large TV boxes as a housing possibility.

Many tenants probably believe that the rental board indulges and forgives tenants. In fact, judges evict non-paying tenants all day long.

From my experience as a small landlord, I know the awkwardness involved when a tenant can’t come up with the dough. Tenants can get aggressive or self-pitying. They harp tales of woe. But as Dawson prof Tony Schwarz used to teach students, “You can only get so far on bullshit alone.”

Comments? kgravy@openface.ca