Rate your landlord

New website urges tenants to dish the
dirt on their apartments and their owners

by CHRIS BARRY

Name: Laurier Rochon

Age: 24

Occupation: Founder of The-Leak.org

Bio: This dashing Mile End stud had been an ass-kicking amateur hockey player with NHL ambitions until dislocating both his shoulders in the same season one year and deciding to “pretty well stop everything and start concentrating more on my art and nerdy stuff like that.” Having graduated with a BFA from Concordia last winter and intending to pursue graduate studies somewhere abroad next fall, in the meantime, in between his various work and art projects—“right now I’m doing this thing where I’m basically solidifying a poutine in a huge block of moulded plastic” —Laurier founded a potentially vital new website called The-Leak.org, a bilingual online forum of sorts where Montrealers looking to move into new digs can check to see what previous tenants have to say about said dwelling and its management. Although still in its infancy, Laurier says “the Leak is going to need the whole community involved if it’s going to be effective. Right now it really seems like Montreal landlords have all the power and are using that to their advantage. So I’m hoping this site will get people talking more and democratize knowledge so renting an apartment becomes a more level playing field.”

How the idea was born: “I guess you could call me the archetypal student-type guy who changes apartments every year, has a bunch of different roommates every year and gets screwed over by his landlord every single year. All my landlords have either been liars or really lazy or… just very, very bad. And this year was the same thing. We got a bunch of promises, all these things they said they’d do that fell flat as soon as we signed the lease. So my roommate and I were just kind of sitting around wondering how this happens every year, always getting these bad landlords knowing that we probably could have avoided everything if we only could have spoken to the previous tenants. So that’s how we got the idea to build this platform where people can just log on and say how they feel about their landlords. It’s free, you can be anonymous and it’s fairly simple to use.”

Has anybody ever posted anything remotely positive about their landlords? “Oh yeah, for sure, people do. And I fully expect and encourage landlords to post as well, saying how great their apartments are.”

Those who tend to be the most enthusiastic about the The-Leak.org so far: “People who are very, very mad at their landlords. But we’re finding people read all the posts even if they’re not the slightest bit interested in renting an apartment at any of the buildings reviewed. That’s because they’re fun and interesting to read. People are curious about what rents are in different neighbourhoods and about the various buildings, comparing them to their own apartments.”

Are most of the apartments reviewed of the less expensive variety? Is it safe to assume there aren’t too many people bitching about their surly doorman at the Gleneagles? “Surprisingly, it’s been the opposite, we’ve had many posts addressing the pricier apartments in town.”

Last book read: Attentat, by Amélie Nothomb.

Musical preferences: Keith Jarrett, the Roots, Brian Eno.

Words of wisdom: “Something that can’t be simply explained is not well understood.”

Comments: dimwit@hdot.net