A group of tenants in Montreal on Monday denounced the unfair hiking of rent prices.
As the Montreal real-estate market heats up--vacancy rates are at record lows--landlords renovate their properties. But the renovations could be a pretext to raise the cost of rent, according to tenants in the Plateau Mont-Royal, and their local MNA.
"They use these pretexts to put out the tenants and to increase double and triple their rate," said Quebec Solidaire's Ruba Ghazal, who represents the area. "So we call it renoviction because their goal is not to renovate, their goal is to make more and more and more money and to put those tenants out of their apartments."
One Plateau couple said their landlord was eager to renovate their building. After months of construction, most of the tenants left when the rent spiked. Eric Beaulieu managed to reach a settlement with his landlord; many others were not.
"We were 14 people in our building, and we were only two apartments left so a lot of people were leaving because they just didn't know what to do with the situation," Beaulieu said.
Quebec Solidaire MNAs, like Ghazal, say they want the CAQ government to put a moratorium on evictions due to expansion, evictions, subdivision or a change of ownership in neighbourhoods with a three per cent vacancy rate--or less.
With files from Emily Campbell
