#WORLD #WORLDWIDE #CANADA #ANARCHISM #News #Journal #Update - (en) Canada, Collectif Emma Goldman - Right to housing: when evictions lead to death (ca, de, it, fr, pt, tr)[machine translation]

 The housing crisis is hitting everywhere in Quebec. Between very low vacancy

rates (1) or exorbitant prices demanded by exploitative owners for their
slums/apartments, it is becoming more and more difficult, if not impossible, to
find affordable and quality housing. As if the picture were not already gloomy
enough, we must add to this the apartments transformed into Airbnb and the
renovations (2) which push tenants to leave their homes by force in the face of
the vertiginous rise in the price of their rent. Thus people, who very often have
lived in their apartment for several decades (!), are put on the street. It is
obvious that this leads to human tragedies for these people who will have to
leave their homes since their owner wants to increase his profits by exploiting
people in one of their most basic needs, that of having a roof over their heads. .

This drama, Clément Robitaille paid for it with his life. The one who was thrown
out of his apartment where he had lived for 30 years was found dead on the seat
of his vehicle which served as his apartment... Paul Girouard, friend and former
neighbor of Mr. Robitaille told the newspaper La Press: "The owners would go
after him often. They were putting pressure. They still harassed him until he
signed. ". He added: "When[Mr. Robitaille]signed, that's when his life changed.
He had become depressed, you could see that his business was no longer working. I
went to see him, he didn't even speak anymore, I saw that he was disturbed,
overwhelmed by events. ". Evicted because his accommodation was deemed unsanitary
and unsuitable for habitation. Instead of doing the renovations and temporarily
relocating Mr. Robitaille, administrative judge Sylvie Lambert accepted the
eviction request made by the owners of the building.

At that time, Clément Robitaille was paying $400 for his apartment, which today
is rented for $1,400 to the new tenant (!), or $1,000 more! With the housing
crisis and Clément's low income, it was impossible for him to find accommodation
at the same price as the one he had been living in before. "He saw that it was
much more expensive," explains Mr. Girouard. "When he was going to look at
housing, it was like $800-$900. He said, "That doesn't make sense. "". Leaving
with his truck and the few personal effects he had, Clément Robitaille was lost
in the mist, so much so that his relatives launched a search warrant before Mr.
Girouard eventually found him. But eventually, the worst happened. As the
coroner's report states: "Mr. Robitaille likely died on July 16, 2021 of a heart
attack, after becoming dehydrated[following]an extended stay in his vehicle,
without ventilation or air conditioning, so that the outside temperatures were
high". This 71-year-old without health problems let himself die: "It was because
they kicked him out that he let himself die," says Mr. Girouard, a formula
repeated in other testimonies . "When you stay in the same place[for so long],
then you have to change places, you are lost. (3) All this while the Civil Code
of Quebec prohibits the eviction of a person aged 70 or over who has lived in the
same place for 10 years and who earns equal to or below the maximum income that
would allow him to be eligible for low rent, i.e. $31,000 per year for a single
person in Montreal (in 2020). Clément Robitaille met all these criteria according
to his friend Girouard... He was still thrown into the street at the cost of his
life. Quebec justice and the owners of the apartment block have blood on their
hands. A life sacrificed in the name of profit and private property.

1. According to Statistics Quebec: "In the fall of 2021, the rental housing
vacancy rate for all centers of 10,000 inhabitants or more in Quebec is 2.5%. ".
However, in some cities, the vacancy rate is even more critical as is the case in
Saguenay where it stands at 1.7% (!) for 2021 and 2.8% in 2020. Meanwhile, rents
increased by 7%. Worse still, in some cities like Sherbrooke, Granby, Terrebonne
and Gatineau, vacancy rates are close to 0%! Result: it is almost impossible to
find housing and the rent increases are extremely high. In the suburbs of
Montreal, the rate is 1.1% and in Laval, in just a few years, from 2019 to 2022,
the price of rents has exploded by 37%! Abitibi is also hard hit with rates of
0.3% in Rouyn-Noranda, 1.1% in Amos and 2.2% in Val-d'Or.

2. A renoviction occurs when a landlord wants to kick out the tenant on the
pretext of upcoming renovations. Very often, either the renovations are not done
or when they occur, the owners take advantage of this to increase the price of
the rent disproportionately in order to make more profit. The former tenant is
therefore no longer able to pay the amount of rent made too high and the next
ones will pay a much too expensive price. Without a public rent register showing
the price paid by the previous tenant, it is often very difficult to know how
much the previous tenant paid for a person who subsequently rents the same
apartment. With the registry and knowing the prices, it would be possible to
unseal abusive increases.

3. Frédérik-Xavier Duhamel, La Presse: "It was because they kicked him out that
he let himself die"

For more information on renoviction cases, here are some articles to read:

Jules Couturier, Journal Métro: Rénoviction: how to defend oneself?

Stéphanie Vallet and Zacharie Goudreault, Le Devoir: Henry Zavriyev at the head
of an empire of "renovictions" at 28

Zacharie Goudreault, Le Devoir: The new owners implicated in the increase in
evictions

Sarah R. Champagne, Le Devoir: Sherbrooke tenants resist eviction despite
pressure from landlords

Renoviction Montreal

How to organize and fight?

Emma Goldman Anarchist Collective: Housing: The State at the service of the
profits of landlords and speculators

Collective anarchist Emma Goldman: 6th edition of the regional bulletin Le
Pic-Bois, "The rent strike" now online

* Photo credit: Plateau Mont-Royal Housing Committee.

  by Collectif Emma Goldman

http://ucl-saguenay.blogspot.com/2022/06/droit-au-logement-quand-les-evictions.html
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