Ousted tenants down and out

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by Craig Segal

One of the 30 tenants who were thrown out of their apartments at 1195-1201 Mackay is being treated in St-Luc Hospital because he stopped eating. "After being thrown out, I thought, 'What's the use of living anymore?'" Raymond Brunet told the Mirror last Sunday night in his hospital room.

Brunet's troubles began after Les Cours du Roi Investment Company paid almost $700,000 for the building last March. After the sale, two men who had worked on the sales transaction--Jean Michel Casimir and Leonardo Arrieta--forced tenants out. The building is now locked up with no heat or hot water. Neither the city nor the Régie du logement had approved the evictions.

Since the last story about the Mackay tenants was published in the Mirror last Nov. 16, several tenants have brought their cases to the Régie, including Muhammad Zafar, an Engineering master's student at Concordia University. In December, a Régie du logement judge granted Zafar permission to retrieve his belongings--including his PC containing his master's degree research project, stereo, TV and VCR--but they were gone. "I felt shocked," says Zafar, who flunked his research project.

Leslie Bencze, 62, is currently living in an unheated apartment. Since being evicted he has lost weight and been sick with a bad cold. "I definitely want some compensation," says Bencze. "I don't want to get rich off this thing. I just want to be able to start all over again."