The City of Montreal is planning to crack down on landlords who don’t keep their buildings and apartment units up to code.
Officials want 10,000 new inspections carried out this year alone.
Apartment buildings that are decades old and contain dozens of units will be prioritized.
”Our target right now is not to go to 100 units that was built two years ago. This is not where there should be an issue,” Mayor Valérie Plante said.
Four new inspectors have been hired.
Landlords who don’t keep their buildings up to code and don’t provide clean, safe apartment units could face fines or have mortgage payments frozen by creditors.
The email you need for the day’s
top news stories from Canada and around the world.
”We want to support tenants. That’s what we’re doing. We want to be proactive,” Plante said.
But opposition councillors aren’t impressed. They say 50 new inspectors are needed for the city to reach its goals.
”I don’t see how, within five years, the City of Montreal, with the current inspectors, will be able to answer all of the demands from the tenants in Montreal,” Julien Hénault-Ratelle, city councilllor housing critic, said.
Tenants’ rights advocates are skeptical that anything will change with the announcement, arguing that similar plans by city officials have been made in the past with few results.
”If a tenant calls, the inspector does not come. The inspectors don’t go on site to see the problem. They send a letter to the owner asking the problem be solved and that’s it. There is no more followup to that,” Martin Blanchard, a tenants’ rights advocate, told Global News.
But the mayor is promising those days are over with tough new measures that are now coming into effect.
© 2024 Global News, a division of Corus Entertainment Inc.