Shelter Housing and Homes

By Arnold Bennett and Arnold Bennett

No Synopsis Available.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 1551640422
• ISBN13: 9781551640426
• Release Date: September 1996
• Publisher: Black Rose Books
• Length: 236 Pages

Customer Reviews

Rental Hell in Montreal, Canada

This is must-read information for any tenant in the Province of Quebec. Your rights are in peril if you believe that the "system" will automatically work to protect you. Bennett's compilation of facts and anecdotes from advocacy workers in the Montreal rental market will open your eyes to what can happen when the law only works for the wealthy. Bennett's book shows how civil rights of tenants, especially poor tenants, are all too often irrelevant before the Montreal Rental Board, where the prime consideration appears to be catering to landlords by helping them evict tenants and up rents to increase the value of their business investments. Access to justice, and the law, should not be about boosting anybody's business investment; it should be about mutual obligations in the rental contract. On a note of personal interest, a subject not mentioned in Bennett's book and certainly worth writing a whole new book, is that the law in Quebec actually denies tenants the right to a private lock on their apartment doors! This results in home invasions, thefts, mail tampering, violence against tenants in the middle of the night by harasser-landlords and their building managers. This violence is particularly addressed toward women, who comprise the largest group of the poor and the biggest population living in low-income housing and slums. As a woman and a tenant in Montreal, I can tell you the violence I have encountered: (1) A month after I rented a nice new apartment in 1985, the building was sold to a developer who falsely reported to the City and Police that I was a prostitute, to elicit their harassment of me and force me to move out. The landlord assaulted me in front of witnesses, the courts let him off the hook by finding him guilty but burying the conviction so he could continue his job of driving a kindergarten bus. He came back and smashed my door in with his fist, splintering it from top to bottom while I was trying to move out on the advice of the Sergeant-Detective who had been shocked at the court's decision. (2) In 1987, shortly after I moved into a nice new apartment and painted it, the janitor told other people in the building (falsely) that I was a prostitute, because I wouldn't sleep with him. I came home to find a 6-inch builder's nail driven through the glass eyehole of my door with a vicious note telling me, "Whore, get out of the building!" (3) In 1983, when I was living in a nice, respectable apartment and working days typing in a law firm, and evenings typing freelance from home, the janitor opened his door with nothing but his underpants on, a smile, and his hands full (!) when I came to pay the rent. (4) In 1992 after I had sublet my humble nice new apartment to a good tenant who was shortly to move in, I came home from work at 2:00 a.m. (now owning and running a public typing service with a small office) and found my door broken in and the lock changed. I called police, showed them my l