Rental board’s homeless problem

If you’ve ever had the displeasure of tangling with your landlord at the rental board, you know getting yourself down there is half the battle. The only rental board (Régie du logement) office on the island is at 5199 Sherbrooke E., in the Olympic Village. Car-less people with housing problems face a ride to Viau metro station and either a trip on the 132 bus, or a 10-minute, uphill walk.

It wasn’t always so hard to protect your abode. In 1996–97 the PQ government closed three Montreal-island rental board offices—in Verdun, Côte-des-Neiges, and Ahuntsic/Cartierville—according to Mary-Andrée Jobin, a rental board communications agent. Housing rights groups are asking the new city administration for them back.
“What [the PQ] did was horrible,” says Arnold Bennett, director of the Housing Hotline. “The problem is there are a lot of people who don’t have cars and elderly people who can’t use the metro.” And Bennett estimates the wait to get cases cleared has doubled since the cutbacks—“except for evictions, which are still just as fast.” Bennett sent letters to the city asking them to provide cheap rental space for the board in city buildings.
But the new city administration feels it’s not their responsibility. “It’s clearly a provincial matter,” says mayoral aide Darren Becker. “I’m not disregarding their claims. All I’m saying is, the city has not heard anything from the [provincial] government.”
Bennett is also asking for an improvement of rental board services and a municipal crackdown on bad landlords. :

—Craig Segal