Landlords beware

>> Tenants' rights activist Ted Wright is on your case
by NOEMI LOPINTO

Montreal's property owners are rubbing their hands together with glee: after years of depression, the vacancy rate is way down--close to zero in the Plateau, seven per cent for the rest of the city. Condos are springing up like mushrooms and real estate values have skyrocketed.

Good news? According to tenants' rights activist Ted Wright, there is a dark side to the boom--for tenants. Wright has been a burr in the landlordly posterior for 14 years, providing free legal advice over the phone at the Westmount Legal Clinic and acting as a consultant and mediator on landlord/tenant issues. He also helped write the current lease--the one you can pick up at Jean-Coutu. And he's not afraid to let his opinions show. "As soon as the odour of money wafts through the air," Wright says, "whatever people can get away with is regarded as acceptable in the housing market."

According to Wright, one of the effects of lower vacancy rates is that some landlords become a bit too picky when choosing tenants. The latest newsletter from Montreal's League of Property Owners--The Bulletin--is one example:

"I ask you again to send me all judgements of tenants on social assistance, and add their social insurance numbers," writes Jeanne-Mance Calve#201;#233;, administrator for the league. The league's president, Pierre Aubry, also writes: "Two large groups of tenants merit particular attention... welfare recipients and non-landed immigrants." Aubry says they pose a higher level of risk as they lack property which can be seized in case of non-payment of rent.

Discrimination? Aubry replies ambiguously: "If the government doesn't want us to discriminate they must permit us to treat welfare recipients like others--seizable like others." Aubry says that the league knows only a few cases where non-landed immigrants skipped the lease, and also that "it's a very small number of welfare recipients who don't pay, but they do it over and over again systematically."

Bad faith

Wright says that prospective tenants don't have to give their SIN, but they may simply not get the apartment, and no one can prove why they were refused. "It's a dirty little secret among all the people who work in rental law that it's really easy to break the law," says Wright, "and people get away with it all the time." This is because, Wright explains, "the people who are hurt don't have the means to defend themselves"--one reason for this being cutbacks to legal aid. The law doesn't take into account the disastrous effects of the loss of one's home for the elderly, says Wright.

Another example of what Wright calls abusive treatment by landlords are "bad faith" repossessions: the landlord will evict the tenant on the pretext that a relative plans to move in--which they may do, for a short time--and once they've gone they renovate and jack up the rent--or convert to condos.

The penalty for a bad faith repossession, says Wright, is between $6,000 and $29,000 and is rarely, if ever, enforced. This is laughable he says, "when the landlord stands to make a $100,000 profit upon resale." Not to mention increased revenues from illegally raised rents.

Says Pierre Marchand, director of communications at the Re#201;#233;gie du Logement: "It is true that we have seen opposition to rent increases go from 2,700 cases in '98-'99 to an estimated 4,000 for this year, because the economy is heading for a boom period. There are a lot of landlords who think that because they didn't ask for a rent increase, or they asked for a small one, that they can catch up this time." But Marchand sees it from both sides: "The landlord and tenant both have obligations. You'll find corruption on both sides." :

Five Ted Wright principles for dealing with apartment repossessions

1) Be aware that your right to stay in your dwelling is protected by the Quebec Civil Code in an article called "droit de maintien."

2) Ask for compensation, and take the case to the Re#201;#233;gie de Logement--you might get something for your troubles.

3) It is a negotiating tactic for the landlord to offer as little as possible.

4) The court knows the landlord will profit from the repossession, which is why the landlord doesn't want it to come to court.

5) Never believe in the landlord's good faith.

-- N.L.

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