11:18 on 2012/08/20 Reply  

• Frankie 12:00 on 2012/08/20 Permalink

  My brother had a woman who visited the apartment he had for rent tell him that it was haunted and that she would have to perform a voodoo ceremony before she could move in. Really.

• Alison Cummins 12:03 on 2012/08/20 Permalink

  Same laws for everyone. Deal.

  Montreal has a lot of renters, and renters are not socially marked as lesser, because so much of our rental stock is resident-landlord. The landlord lives on the ground floor and keeps an eye on things. If a tenant is being a dick, the landlord knows, and the landlord keeps the place up because they live there. Tenants behave relatively well in these situations. Why should people who already have more to deal with (kids, linguistic/ethnic/racial/age/sexual prejudice) be deprived of access to apartments in which it is possible to live well because the landlords hold these prejudices too?

  If the landlord is racist, they won’t hide it. (I’ve been apartment-hunting with a woman of colour. It wasn’t subtle.) If the tenant is willing to put up with the racism of the landlord because they’re desperate then I say let them go for it.

  When I did a Centraide-sponsored tour of CDN on the theme of housing stock, one of the points that was made was that the city simply doesn’t have much rental stock suitable for families with two or more children. Period. That means that families with children will live in apartments that are too small for them.

  Yes it would be nice for everyone to have silent, non-breeding neighbours. That’s not what life in the city is like. I like living in Montreal; I liked tenant protections when I was a tenant; and now that I’m a landlord I feel I have a duty to the city as a holder of part of its housing stock.

  *** *** ***
  Pro tip from a landlord: renovate the apartment and install a nice shower instead of a bathtub. The renovation will support a substantial rent increase and parents of small children will not apply.

• Martin 12:09 on 2012/08/20 Permalink

  I agree with Alison. There should be one rule at the time of renting: first come, first served, no screening. If one is an owner and can’t cope with this, then one shouldn’t be renting flats. There are many ways to make money with money, but renting apartments is special and one just can’t do what one wishes with their private property without impacting lives of others.

• walkerp 12:18 on 2012/08/20 Permalink

  I’m sympathetic to the need for strong tenants’ rights, but landlords also need timely and effective mechanisms to get out problem tenants. My aunt had a guy who was a crazy hoarder of cats and it took her several years to get him out, during which time the cat piss and shit so destroyed the place that the entire floor had to be literally removed. This was in Toronto, but I’m sure there are similar stories here.

• Ian 12:33 on 2012/08/20 Permalink

  To tell the truth, I have 2 small children and I actually moved from my last apartment because the lady upstairs had 2 small children and she would quite literally not even consider asking them not to run or jump off the furniture, we actually had some quite ugly arguments about it toward the end before I moved out. I always ask if the upstairs neighbours have kids before taking an apartment now. I can understand the landlord’s hesitance, honestly, though I obviously see the point of not allowing landlords to discriminate potential tenants who have children. As in all forms of assholery, though, you just have to hope for the best.

• Bill Binns 14:12 on 2012/08/20 Permalink

  When you setup a system where it is virtually impossible to evict a bad tenant for any reason whatsoever, you cannot blame people for carefully choosing whom they allow to move in. Landlords are choosing someone they may need to deal with for decades. Renters without kids tend to be less trouble and far quieter than renters with kids. Not sure about Quebec but in my experience renters without kids were also far easier to evict than those with kids.

• Ian 14:20 on 2012/08/20 Permalink

  Well actually, you can blame them – that’s the point of the article. It’s against the law to carefully choose you tenants based on certain factors like whether or not they have kids.

• Jack 14:31 on 2012/08/20 Permalink

  Martin I know we have had this conversation before and you were up front about your job, but this is such a fundamental question,” ….one just can’t do what one wishes with their private property “.Is my role as landlord occupant to become a sort of quasi HLM, or social housing support, which is what you seem to infer.Your conception of private property echoes Proudhon and Bakunin, which is fascinating but I don’t know where else it exist in 20th century Quebec.
  I have only on two occasions had to interview tenants in 10 years and the first time I took Martins advice because I thought it was fair and reasonable.It was also the last time, late or bounced checks,accusations that I was “”poisoning the apartment, demanding that I clean the bathroom, WTF etc. The next time I simply did a credit check of the first three, that worked better. Now almost invariably the leases are handed off to friends or are now sold. ie money changes hand between tenants to make sure that the landlord can not attain market price for the apartments. This happened to me last year.So is screening tenants done, yeah it is and frankly I do it on the basis of capacity to pay and nothing else.
  @ Allison, ” I’m a landlord I feel I have a duty to the city as a holder of part of its housing stock.-Pro tip from a landlord: renovate the apartment and install a nice shower instead of a bathtub. The renovation will support a substantial rent increase and parents of small children will not apply.”
  Doesn’t that seem a little contradictory

• ant6n 14:39 on 2012/08/20 Permalink

  @Jack
  You keep bringing back this “market prize” complaint when it comes to your rental stock. You can’t ignore that a rented apartment has a different market value than an unrented apartment, due to the constraints of the market imposed by laws. Any market is constrained by laws, that change the values of whatever the market provides. So therefore you get the exact market value of your apartment – the original rent, at the original unrented apartment value, plus the allowed increases over the last couple of years.

  Why don’t we remove the requirement for food producers to sell food under the condition that it is sanitary and edible — are food producers some sort of social health service? Why not let the free market decide which food is edible or not?

• willie granger 15:14 on 2012/08/20 Permalink

  Applicant: “Do you have an apartment to rent?”
  Landlady Kate: “Yes, I sure do.”
  Applicant: “I have kids.”
  Landlady Kate: “Oh, I just signed a lease with someone else this morning.”

• Ian 16:00 on 2012/08/20 Permalink

  More like “Oh you have kids, that’s great! Someone else looked that apartment right before you though, and we’ll have to get back to you”. At least that’s what people kept telling us last summer. “Oh you’re new to Quebec”, “Oh you’re self-employed”, “Oh you’re gay”, or “Oh you’re Muslim” could also apply.

• Martin 16:01 on 2012/08/20 Permalink

  If a tenant does not pay his/her rent, or has multiple delays in paying; or disturbs neighbours repeatedly; or has unhealthy habits that is a hazard to others; or in a few other deviant situations — then an owner can file a report at the Rental Board and get the tenant evicted (out of his apartment) in less than 3 months (for a payment default) or less then 6 months (for the other reasons). I find this severe enough and in my experience in a comité logement, quite enough for owners to defend their rights vis-à-vis tenants.

  Is this enough to protect owners? In a general perspective, the answer is yes. The vast majority of owners get paid on time and make a profit on their investment.

  Is this enough to get rid of bad tenants? Formally (or legally if you prefer) I think the answer is yes. But substantially, or, concretely, taking into account the amount of “assholery”? Now we could have an interesting conversation here, because in my experience, in general, tenants don’t protect their own interests and their own rights well enough. Maybe it’s the same with owners, I just don’t work with them to answer positively.

  Given all this, should we permit discrimination of any kind because some owners cannot defend themselves? I think the answer is no, because I believe that might does not trump rights.

• Ian 16:06 on 2012/08/20 Permalink

  That I agree with entirely – good analysis, Martin. I think the same can be said for tenants – essentially we need to know our rights on both ends of the rental transaction or we’re just asking to be screwed by shady types. That’s what the Régie is for – to protect both parties fairly.

• Alison Cummins 16:32 on 2012/08/20 Permalink

  Jack: Of course it’s contradictory! What, did you think I wasn’t human?

  In my experience as a tenant, if someone didn’t want to rent to me the rent would be bizarrely high. “Oh yes, this 3 1/2 over the store is still available. It’s $3,500. Would you like to see it?”

  Other landlords I know hold an open house to show their apartments. Nobody knows how many people saw the place before them. Everyone is told that there’s someone else (a friend) who has expressed interest in the place. Everyone fills out a credit check form. The landlord reviews the applications in private and offers the apartment to the tenants in order of liking.

• Jack 16:41 on 2012/08/20 Permalink

  @ Anton, you make some good points, same with Martin. One I don’t get is,”So therefore you get the exact market value of your apartment – the original rent, at the original unrented apartment value, plus the allowed increases over the last couple of years.”. Is that why I have a long term tenant who pays less than $ 800.00 for a 6 1/2 that I could rent for $1,400.00.
  Here’s my argument, my fixed costs,insurance,school tax, and property tax are all directly related to the property market I live in.When a duplex is bought for $500,000 a floor is added and each unit sold for over $500,000 ( 1,6 million) across the street I go shit, because that price will be reflected in my costs in the subsequent evaluations. The market dictates my costs but not my revenue, which is set by the Rental Board and does not even meet inflation.I know I am sounding like an old whiner, because I am and I just gave a contractor 7 grand to replace my balcony, metal work and 22 stairs. Just trying to provide another perspective.

• Kate 18:04 on 2012/08/20 Permalink

  @willie granger: I am not a landlady and am very unlikely ever to be one. Why this blaming for a phenomenon I described, but didn’t recommend?

• qatzelok 18:07 on 2012/08/20 Permalink

  I live in a coop where noise issues have been a problem with kids or domestic animals. In all cases, this is an infrastructure problem, and not a “bad tenant” problem. Often, it just takes better sound insulation to remedy this. There needs to be more social concern for protection against noise in general in our society. Perhaps, instead of throwing people with small kids into the streets, there could be a subsidy for retrofitting older buildings for noise insulation?

• dwgs 19:12 on 2012/08/20 Permalink

  @qatzelok, if you’re bothered by animal noises I suggest you get out of that coop immediately and find other accommodations. Like a co-op perhaps. ;-)

• ant6n 20:29 on 2012/08/20 Permalink

  @Jack
  The maximum on the rent increases is to protect tenants to not be subject to huge rent increases because of a volatile market, or because a landlord is playing the stress and cost of moving against a tenant. It should be approximately related to inflation – so the costs of the landlord going up with inflation should match the rent also going up by inflation.

  It’s an interesting point that you as a landlord actually suffer the increased values of the volatile market via insurance and property taxes, I hadn’t considered that. Maybe in return for offering rental stock at the fixed-to-inflation prices, the property taxes could be fixed-to-inflation as well (relative to how much is actually rented). Of course, once you actually get to do a new lease (at like twice the previous rent), the property taxes would have to revert to the actual value.

  But I get your point, they should probably allow rent increases that are at least slightly higher than inflation.

  (Btw, I live in an apartment whose lease is 18 years old, and it’s ‘just’ 25% below what they’d charge today)

• Blork 22:49 on 2012/08/20 Permalink

  For the most part, I agree with Alison, although I can fully empathize with Kate’s comment that a small-time landlord who is gaining a neighbour as well as a tenant might want to be more selective than the law allows.

  If I were in that situation I would simply not advertise the apartment. I would rely on word of mouth as a way of narrowing the pool. It’s more work that way, but that’s the price you pay if you want to be selective.

  But if you’re going to advertise the rental to the public, then you have to abide by the public rules.

• Alison Cummins 22:50 on 2012/08/20 Permalink

  Rent increases are not pegged to inflation, they are calculated on the basis of your costs. If your taxes go up then the rent goes up. That’s the easy part.

  Renos are the hard part. You are legally entitled to pay yourself back in about 22 years: about the time the renos need to be done again. This makes real estate a dubious investment for landlords because other places to put your money will get you a better return.

  Rent increases are not structured to make real estate a good investment, they are structured to ensure that if someone moves into an apartment that they won’t be forced to move out ten years later just because the neighbourhood got fancy. It’s their home: they should be able to live there until they die. A landlord can get back every additional penny they put in but not make a profit on it.

  The advantage to the landlord is having tenants who will help pay the mortgage. That’s all we’re entitled to. Anything more is gravy.

• ant6n 05:25 on 2012/08/21 Permalink

  @Alison
  But in different areas of Montreal, property taxes go up different amounts. They may go up as a percentage of the value of the property, but also if the property value increases – is that taken in to account?

• paul 08:30 on 2012/08/21 Permalink

  “There should be one rule at the time of renting: first come, first served, no screening.”

  Should this apply when renting a room as well?
  How about when we apply for jobs?

  I suspect a situation like this would result in much more conflict between poorly matched landlords and tenants than what is happening currently.

  As the owner of a property, landlords should have the right to rent to whomever they see as the best fit for the space. As long as their decision isn’t based in hatred (of race, religion, etc.), they should be able to choose a tenant which reflects the values that they desire in a tenant (clean, quiet, financially stable, etc.). Until the government starts subsidizing landlords, they should have no say in who lives in the unit.

  While I value the importance of an affordable housing stock, there also needs to be incentive for the landlord to properly maintain the property. The current system appears to be broken (especially for the law-abiding landlord). I think ant6n has some good ideas in terms of indexing rent increases better with inflation/property taxes.

• Daisy 14:29 on 2012/08/21 Permalink

  I was once denied the right to rent an apartment for being a student. I was so flabbergasted I did not know how to respond. I wish I had made an official complaint. I hope that landlady got a much worse tenant than a quiet, serious student whose main hobbies are reading and cooking, who rarely has friends over, and who goes to bed at 10:00.

• Kate 14:34 on 2012/08/21 Permalink

  I was once turned down because I was female and the building manager said “It’s mostly men here, and I don’t want any women sniffing around my boys.”

  Flabbergasted sort of came in there, but also the realization that I really did not want to live in a building where such a manager and such an attitude prevailed. (No, it was not in the Village.)

• Alison Cummins 15:05 on 2012/08/21 Permalink

  ant6n,

  Yes.

  My property taxes go up by $X per year, each of my tenants gets $X/6 per year tacked onto their current rent.

  So if I have to pay $720 more property tax because of changes in the mil rate or my property evaluation, I eat 1/3 ($240) of that because I live in 1/3 of the property. Each of my four tenants lives in 1/6 of the property, so their share of the tax increase is $720/6 = $120 each per year, or $10/month.

  There’s no overall percentage that rents are allowed go up. Rent increases are calculated on a case-by-case basis for each property and each apartment.

  http://www.rdl.gouv.qc.ca/fr/calcul/calcul.asp

• Alison Cummins 15:55 on 2012/08/21 Permalink

  Paul,

  In the case of a job the employer screens the employee because they are the one paying. (However, there are still limits on the screening criteria that are allowed. You aren’t allowed to refuse to hire first nations employees because some of your current staff have hateful ideas about first nations people and you’re worried about conflict. You need to be able to figure out a way to manage the conflict in your shop, not blame the victim.)

  In the case of a tenant, it’s the tenant who is paying for the space. The landlord is allowed to check references to confirm that the person has demonstrated that they are a good tenant (do they pay? do they damage property? do they rehearse their band at three in the morning?) but that’s it. If someone’s tenant credentials* (behaviour in a previous dwelling, capacity to pay the rent*) are satisfactory, you rent to them. It’s like a restaurant or a store. You don’t get to pick and choose your customers beyond basic behaviour standards and ability to pay. The tenant is the one who decides whether they want to live here or there, just as a customer is the one who decides whether to shop at this or that store. They’re paying and they are allowed to be completely whimsical about their preferences.

  http://www.immigration-quebec.gouv.qc.ca/en/housing/finding-housing/lease.html

  *** *** **
  You say that ant6n has some good ideas about indexing rent increases to property tax rates. If you look at the Régie du logement, you will see that this is a non-issue — as I explained yesterday. Tax increases are completely covered by rent increases. End of story.

  What is an issue — as I mentioned yesterday — is renos. If I spend $2,500 fixing up your bathroom, that’s cash out of my pocket today (or a loan on which I am paying interest). I am entitled to raise your rent by $6/month. If I have financed the reno by borrowing against my mortgage, if the interest rate is anything bigger than 2.9% then the rent increase won’t cover the interest. You will never pay me for the reno, even though it feels like you do because I raised your rent.

  If my mortgage is 4%, then I need to be able to raise your rent by $16/month in order to be reimbursed within 20 years. I haven’t made a penny on this: I’m just paying back interest and capital. If I had the money in cash and invested it at 2% instead of fixing your bathroom, then twenty years later I’d have made $1,142 in interest.

  There’s very little incentive for me to fix up your bathroom. In the short run that’s ok: you have a crappy bathroom and you pay low rent. Cool. In the long run I probably haven’t fixed the windows, the plumbing, the wiring, the heating etc either, and the building is falling down around your head because I need to fund the repairs out of my own pocket and I might not have it.

• ant6n 16:21 on 2012/08/21 Permalink

  Thanks for the detailed explanations.

  (I was refused one based on credit – as a foreigner, I couldn’t get a credit card, and thus had no credit. That sucked.)

• Jack 21:28 on 2012/08/21 Permalink

  @Alison one really important part of the calculation you didn’t speak to, one that my tenant and I had a huge laugh about, was at the very beginning of the Regie’s calculation. As a an owner occupant my tenant and I are supposed to agree on what the market price is of my apartment and then begin the calculations. I said ok I have lived here for lets say 32 years so I am paying $ 400, “Ha Ha no, you could get probably $ 1600 for your place.” That’s when I started laughing.

• Alison Cummins 21:29 on 2012/08/21 Permalink

  ant6n,

  My parents were In that situation once. Fortunately they had cash and were able to work something out. (Create a joint “and” checking account with the landlord and deposit a year’s worth of rent in it.) I doubt most people are able to do that.

• Jean Naimard 21:56 on 2012/08/21 Permalink

  The comments make me puke. How can people be so unsensitive???

  The majority of people are renters, so it’s only normal that the law will favourize renters; that’s Democracy at work, folks. I know, the english only like Democracy when it favours them, but though, that’s life in a french country.

  We also do not worship private property like the english do, so your castle is not sacrosanct to us. In this climate, a dwelling is an absolute right because it is as indispensable as food and air, so we have wisely decided to not have petty landlords discriminate for petty reasons.

  If the old couple wants quietness, they should get themselves a cabin in the woods. But if they live in the City, they have to accept the consequences of their choice.

• ant6n 06:10 on 2012/08/22 Permalink

  @Jean
  Who are you calling English who are you calling French? Who’s this “us” and “them”? What’s with the hate for immigrants, the English? The pseudo-socialism?
  I don’t wanna feed the trolls … but seriously, you’re attitudes, in the country where I was born, would make people consider you being part of the brown spectrum.

• Jean Naimard 09:33 on 2012/08/22 Permalink

  ant6n: Cut it out with the politically-correct B.S.

  In Canada, there is clearly the english, who have conquered everything by war, and the rest; the indians and the french who have had only crumbs left behind.

  The hate is from the english towards the indians that have been exterminated first (think of Amherst and his smalpox-ridden blankets) and tried to be assimilated in the child-raping residential schools, and towards the french who have been the object of assimilation and minorization through immigrants deliberately made to not integrate into Québec.

  If you live in Montréal, you should get that big square head of your anglo-saxon arse and notice that you live in a french society, with wildly different values than your little self-centered english world and one that is far more open towards the World with a much richer and vivid culture.

  Yes, I am brown, because I do not speak white. I am brown too because I call your B.S. and I am brown because I stand up to canadian colonialism.

  Lastly, if the french hated the english to one tenth the english hate the french, we would have thrown out back into the sea by 1770. We are very tolerant: we have tolerated all the shit (brown stuff) you have thrown at us for two centuries before we started to say ENOUGH!

  It just seems that some squareheads are not very good at learning…

• ant6n 09:46 on 2012/08/22 Permalink

  For the record, I was born and raised in (East) Germany.

• Ian 10:09 on 2012/08/22 Permalink

  Ah, jeannaimard, repeating the same tired arguments that got you banned from nearly every group on reddit. I find it lovable that you conveniently forget that there were natives here before the french arrived. The French colonised what is Canada even before the English got here. you are an historically illiterate hypocrite.

• qatzelok 10:30 on 2012/08/22 Permalink

  Yes, Ian, there were natives here before the French. So the French perfected co-existence. The Acadians actually created a bi-cultural society where everyone could chose between Catholicism and the local Micmac religions. The English didn’t co-exist. They non-existed everyone who came in contact with them. The racism and scorched earth violence of the Anglos lead to their victory. Congratulations. Now keep up the post victory P.C. BS. “We are the world, we are the Anglos.”

• dwgs 10:42 on 2012/08/22 Permalink

  You know, I wonder whatever happened to all that love that the French founders of Quebec had for their native brethren? It certainly seems to have dried up at some point in our history. If you don’t believe me I suggest you go talk to some people from the Mohawk community.

• Ian 10:46 on 2012/08/22 Permalink

  @qatzelok did co-existence include the aboriginal slaves kept by the french colonists? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slavery_in_New_France

• Alison Cummins 11:32 on 2012/08/22 Permalink

  Jean Naimard,

  Please point to where I reject democracy.

  The law does allow me to reject noisy renters to preserve the quiet tenor of my particular building. I just can’t reject young people because I’m afraid they will be noisy. I can reject people who won’t be able to pay, but I can’t reject foreign-born applicants on the grounds that immigrants don’t pay.

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