Dozens of tenants in Montreal mental-health supportive housing evicted with six weeks' notice

Tenants in a building in Ahuntsic-Cartierville are facing mass eviction with only six weeks' notice. It's a common enough story in Montreal these days, but in this case, there's even more to worry about: about half the tenants live there because they already have serious mental health problems.

"I was completely shocked – I couldn’t believe it," said one of these tenants, Simon Pauze.

He came to live at the building, which has roughly 70 total units, after severe depression and a nervous breakdown landed him in the hospital.

But the residence in Ahuntsic-Cartierville, which he ended up in 10 years ago, has intervention workers on site and activities meant to help those struggling with their mental health, who inhabit about half the units.

"I was expecting to stay here the rest of my life," said Pauze.

"Somebody was here all the time, [so] that if anything went wrong, I could come down and talk to them."

The project is run by a community organization, Espace la Traversée, and it's funded by the West Island health authority.

But the building is privately owned, and the owner decided the lease would end on March 14, giving tenants only six weeks to find new homes when they got their letters of notice in early February.

"Many efforts were made to convince the owner to extend the lease, to no avail," said the health authority in a statement.

The owner of the building told Radio-Canada that the community organization had the right under its contract to buy the building, and that it declined to do so.

The health authority is trying to find new housing for the current "users" of the space and to relocate them, it said.

Pauze said he found his own new apartment for the month of May, and has the option to go into temporary housing before then.

But he finds the idea of moving twice in a row to be overwhelming, so he's decided to stay put until May—without knowing what will happen on eviction day, not just to him but to all the other tenants who may not have a new option by then.

"It doesn’t interest me, because I’m extremely anxious," he said. "To move and then move again, it’s just... I can’t do it."