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Elderly Get the Boot?
By Stephanie O'Hanley, Hour
Canada
June 2, 2005
If no one intervenes, elderly Chinese pensioners living in a social housing project in Chinatown may soon be homeless. On May 6, the Court of Quebec upheld a 2002 Régie du logement Decision allowing their landlord, the Montreal Chinese Community United Centre/Housing Corporation, to cancel the leases of 16 tenants if they don't settle unpaid rent by June 30. Tenants say at least 30 residents involved in the dispute have received such eviction notices.
That a majority of the tenants are seniors and many are unilingual Cantonese and Toisan speakers in their 70s, 80s and 90s, outrages lawyer Kimon Kling, who recently took on their case pro bono. "It's supposed to be, in the Chinese community, respect for the elderly," Kling says. "This is abuse of the elderly."
The 82-unit housing project at St-Dominique and De la Gauchetière is subsidized by the Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation (CMHC) and the Société d'Habitation du Quebec. Initially, all of the poorest residents paid 25 per cent of their household incomes in rent.
But in 2000, CMHC subsidies dropped. And the housing project's board of directors, which includes elected members of the United Centre's board, raised rents for low-income residents in the CMHC-funded apartments. The hike (typically to 35 per cent of family income) is more than pensioners can afford, explains the tenants' spokesperson Victor Tom. They kept paying their original rents and 36 tenants even won a case at the Régie. Then an ugly, three-year court battle began.
No one from the United Centre was available for comment. But their lawyer, Roger Vokey, says the tenants aren't "necessarily" evicted. "That policy decision has not been made yet, to my knowledge," Vokey said, a point of view that doesn't seem to jibe with what tenants are saying.
"They throw us out, everybody [will] sleep in the front door," says Tom, who questions why the United Centre and CMHC spent thousands of dollars on high-powered lawyers fighting the tenants.
An election for the housing project's board of directors is overdue, Tom says. As a last resort, Kling will ask the Quebec Superior Court to force the United Centre to hold one. "The goal is to get the board removed and have a new [separate] board throw out this lawsuit," Kling says.
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