Bill 31

Montrealers urge government to stop Bill 31

Local Journalism Initiative / The Link / February 5, 2024 / Bill 31, housing crisis, Montreal, tenant rights

Protesters hold up a sign reading “it took three months to recognize a genocidal ‘state’. Do you really think the CAQ is worried about its tenants? Liberation for all.” Photo Andraé Lerone Lewis

Sarah-Maria Khoueiry
Local Journalism Initiative

On Feb. 3, around a thousand protesters gathered in front of the Saint-Édouard Church on the corner of Beaubien and Saint-Denis Street, where organizers handed out pamphlets and chant guides to the crowd.

The protest, organized by the Coalition of Housing Committees and Tenants Associations of Quebec (RCLALQ), aimed to publicly oppose Bill 31. This bill, if passed, will allow landlords to reject lease transfers with no valid explanation, and then cancel the lease.

“The rents are already too high, and they will be higher after that,” said Martin Blanchard, the coordinator of the RCLALQ. “There are other things that we are mad about, but the lease transfer thing is the most damning.”

Among other concerns expressed by organizers such as Rosalye, the community organizer of the Comité logement de la Petite Patrie, is the discrimination against tenants from marginalized communities. Rosalye’s last name is revoked for fear of being refused an apartment in the future. She believes that expressing a negative opinion on current housing management could deny her housing in the future. Rosalye thinks France-Élaine Duranceau, Quebec’s housing minister, is directly “attacking tenants” by only consulting with landlords rather than talking to tenant rights’ organizations.

She also explained that the bill would allow municipalities to sell social housing (HLM).

“The fact that people will be able to buy HLM [is] so problematic,” she added. “That’s something we should be proud of as Quebecers to have for people that have less revenue.”

Most chants called for the resignation of Duranceau. The RCLALQ also demanded a rent freeze, rent control, abolishing security deposits, and the conservation of lease transfers.

The protesters marched down Beaubien Street, all the way to Marché Jean Talon by way of Little Italy, and finally reached the Centre de Ressources et d’Action Communautaire de la Petite-Patrie (CRACPP). The centre is home to the Comité logement de la Petite Patrie, an organization that helps people facing issues with housing, such as rent increases, vermin, discrimination, and gentrification.

Many speeches also brought up the link between the housing crisis, immigration influx and asylum seekers.

Cédric Dussault, the spokesperson of the RCLALQ, argued in an introductory speech that the housing crisis had touched regions with low immigration rates, like Gaspésie, discrediting the link between the two issues.

“It’s trying to deviate the tension from something else,” said Blanchard. “The problem [is] that the rates are too high and that the owners have too much leeway driving up rents.”

Among the attendees was Rich, a 64-year-old man living in Notre-Dame-de-Grâce who was recently evicted from his house, and who wished to remain anonymous. He believes the government doesn’t have a clear idea of how passing this bill will affect the population on a long-term basis.

“I just wish we weren’t here today,” he said. He expressed his disappointment in regards to the government’s lack of vision as to what the decisions are today and how they’re going to affect us. “It’s just going to get worse,” he said.

He believes that protesting gets exposure in the news that can help bring change.

“Through advocacy, you’re never alone,” Rich said.

Multiple attendees were waving Palestinian flags and wearing keffiyehs. A sign written in the colours of the Palestinian flag read, in French, “Three months to recognize a genocidal ‘state.’ Do you really think the CAQ cares about tenants? Liberation for all.”

Juan Carlos Angel Ramirez, a protester with the Alliance Ouvrière contingent, thinks that the issues are interconnected.

“If the people here rise up against the [Canadian] government […] maybe, that’s how we can change things [everywhere] somehow,” he said.

Montrealers urge government to stop Bill 31 Read More »

Bill 31 will mean more impossible choices for Montreal women

Bill 31 will only make the housing crisis worse for women. Graphic Panos Michalakopoulos

Benjamin Lucas
Local Journalism Initiative

Content warning: this article mentions suicide and abuse.

Posters on signposts, recurring protests down major streets, petitions and newscasts reveal the outrage of renters against the Legault regime’s proposed end to lease transfers through Bill 31.

The gravity of the situation cannot be overstated: Quebec now stands at a crossroads, with a 44 per cent increase in homelessness in five years and 500 households left without a lease last moving day. The effects of the housing crisis have cascaded across all Canadian society.

Women, who are at an economic disadvantage, are impacted more than most—with single mothers being 38 per cent more likely to spend more than a third of their income on rent. The result of this is that women having experienced abuse have to make a choice: remain with their abusers on whom they depend for housing, or face homelessness.

The housing crisis is putting women in a double bind, forcing them to make impossible decisions, and exacerbating it will only put more strain on already scarce resources. Like living in any other city, being in Montreal brings you face-to-face with certain social realities.

Advocates and experts say that lease transfers are one of the mechanisms that keep rent controlled, and in addition, the Coalition Avenir Québec’s (CAQ) bill would allow for the selling off of much-needed social housing. Given that Montreal is the only city in Canada with more renters than owners, this is especially dangerous.

Throughout Canada, the story is the same. There is a simultaneous rising of rents and domestic abuse. Women’s shelters have lost $150 million in federal funding and face high staff turnover due to their inability to pay them. One woman, interviewed by the CBC, said, “I can’t try to find a job, I can’t better myself, I can’t be safe if I don’t have a home.”

What is a woman to do? Some have even attempted suicide to escape this double bind.

This is not hypothetical. The strain of the housing crisis on domestic violence survivors has already been seen as they lose alternatives to living with their abusers. In Montreal, the women’s shelter Chez Doris was forced to shut down temporarily because it could not feed everyone nor did it have the staff to keep up with demand. This drives women to other shelters, putting more strain on them in turn. A conservative estimate places the number of women turned away from Canadian shelters because of a lack of space at 19,000 per month.

Wait lists for social housing in Canada can be a years long wait, and even the (relatively) fortunate women who can find a bed in a shelter may be unable to find a long-term place to go afterwards, leaving them to spend up to a year in the transition homes. At every stage, the housing crisis means abused women are left with no place to go to get away from their abusers.

Stories from women in this situation are stark and display the impossible situations that they face. Women’s experiences include fearing losing custody of their children because they lack a stable home, spending weeks in abusive homes waiting for calls from shelters, or making the decision to return to the men abusing them. Living with their abusers means forfeiting full participation in society, as explored in Kylie Cheung’s book Survivor Injustice, including losing control over their ability to vote, reproductive system, and too often escalating to losing their life.

The CAQ’s policy makes all this worse. By increasing rent, more people will be made unhoused, and this will put even more strain on the shelters that are available now. More women will be unable to leave their abusers. This comes in the aftermath of a rising tide of domestic abuse, just one sordid result of Legault’s COVID-19 policy.

Perhaps all of this is easy for Legault to ignore, but it is impossible for women who have become ensnared in it. If the state fails to provide alternatives, it is complicit in this abuse. Legault should obey the will of Montreal renters and rescind Bill 31 immediately.