Tenants take to streets of Park Ex to protest Quebec housing bill
CBC
Braving the rain and waving banners, protesters gathered on Saturday afternoon in front of Parc Metro station in the Montreal neighbourhood of Parc-Extension to protest the Quebec government's housing bill known as Bill 31.
Amy Darwish, coordinator of the Comité d'action de Parc-Extension (CAPE), was one of the protesters.
"This demonstration is happening really at a pivotal point," said Darwish, who wants to see the Quebec government change course with Bill 31, which allows landlords to reject any request for a lease transfer without specifying why — and then cancel the lease.
"It's one of the few ways to keep rents affordable, to keep landlords from drastically increasing the rent between two tenants. It's also a way that tenants can support each other … in the midst of what's become an unprecedented housing crisis," said Darwish.
Although the lease transfer provision of the bill may be one of the most controversial, the bill also contains other provisions the government says protect tenants. If the bill is passed, landlords would be forced to pay evicted tenants up to one month's rent per year of continuous residence in the dwelling.
But Darwish called the proposed changes "cosmetic measures that do not fundamentally restrict evictions in any way."
She said the changes "normalize them by sending the message that if you compensate tenants enough, evictions are actually just — and they aren't."
Retired Parc-Extension resident Edward Fell was another one of the protesters.
Every year his landlord asks for more than his pension provides, Fell says, and paying what the landlord is asking in full would mean cutting back on basic life necessities.
"That cheque means that I don't get groceries for a month," said Fell.
Last year, his landlord unsuccessfully tried to evict him, and now he's afraid his neighbours — low-income and elderly tenants — may get kicked out of their homes, he says.
Raphaël Bosquet, another protester, says he has gone to court many times to fight rent increases but has come up short every time.
"I've been in Montreal for the past five years, and every year my landlord has raised the price of [rent] as much as they could without doing barely anything," he said.
"I'm just getting tired of having to pay more and more for nothing."
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