by KRISTIAN GRAVENOR

Many local landlords envisage a big cash payoff in replacing old tenants with new higher-paying ones. However, it's not easy to pull off, thanks to protection offered tenants by law. But what if you turned your tenants into employees and then fired them? One crafty pair of landlords has tried that tack by attempting to fire and evict the residents of three of the four units it owns.

When Willie Coutu and Rolland Dupuis bought the fourplex at 9082 10th Avenue (near St-Michel and Legendre) for $154,000 last year, they signed new leases offering a supposedly discounted rent in return for signed work contracts promising to perform minor maintenance tasks. When Daniel Clark, 39, an eight-year resident at the garden level unit, was told that his generous custom of tending to the 20-by-15-foot lawn and clearing snow would be rewarded with a $20-a-month discount on his rent, he jumped at the offer.

The landlords almost immediately deemed his work unsatisfactory and gave him 30 days to move out. "It's hard to imagine that in this day and age, such a thing can happen," says Clark. "It's machiavellian."

Similarly, Marie-Eve Martin, 26, single mother of a seven-year-old child, who moved into the building this year from Quebec City, signed on under the condition that she regularly clean the hallway outside her apartment. She was told that the 4 1/2 had a market value of $850 a month but that they'd rent it to her for only $595 in return for her doing the occasional mop and sweep. Martin subsequently learned that the previous tenant had been paying $350 a month and filed at the Rental Board for a rent reduction. The appeal could cost the landlords $3,000 a year, and recently the unhappy owners sent Martin a note also deeming her work inadequate. She was ordered to move out.

The case could also be devastating to the woman, as her technical compensation for the cleaning is pegged at $250, but as a welfare recipient she isn't allowed to earn more than $200 a month.

Tensions have risen. Police have been called in on occasion as relations between the owners, their manager and the tenants have repeatedly boiled over.

Repeated attempts to reach the owners for comment proved fruitless.

The case has been legally deemed a work contract dispute and was heard last week at Superior Court. The tenants' request that it be heard at the Rental Board was turned down, as the case had already been launched at the higher court. Justice Benoît Emery promises a verdict next week.

Nicole Boisclair-Clark, the only leaseholder who didn't sign a work contract, has helped organize the others tenants, which include her son. "It's unscrupulous what landlords are doing in an attempt to throw people out of their homes, it's like a disease in this city," she says.

Boisclair-Clark says the experience has inspired her to launch a new tenants' rights group. She says her first mission will be to prevent the same tactic from being used to evict tenants elsewhere.