{"id":6216,"date":"2013-05-09T13:58:40","date_gmt":"2013-05-09T17:58:40","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/genese.qc.ca\/coop-media-de-montreal-regie-du-lentement-record-wait-times-quebecs-rental-board-affect-low-income-tenants-2\/"},"modified":"2021-01-01T23:24:36","modified_gmt":"2021-01-02T04:24:36","slug":"coop-media-de-montreal-regie-du-lentement-record-wait-times-quebecs-rental-board-affect-low-income-tenants","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/genese.qc.ca\/fr\/coop-media-de-montreal-regie-du-lentement-record-wait-times-quebecs-rental-board-affect-low-income-tenants\/","title":{"rendered":"R\u00e9gie du lentement &#8211; Record wait times at Quebec\u2019s rental board affect low-income tenants"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<style type=\"text\/css\" data-created_by=\"avia_inline_auto\" id=\"style-css-av-kjf7boep-65265f41ee58bce47ca87c0ac02def41\">\n#top .av-special-heading.av-kjf7boep-65265f41ee58bce47ca87c0ac02def41{\npadding-bottom:10px;\n}\nbody .av-special-heading.av-kjf7boep-65265f41ee58bce47ca87c0ac02def41 .av-special-heading-tag .heading-char{\nfont-size:25px;\n}\n.av-special-heading.av-kjf7boep-65265f41ee58bce47ca87c0ac02def41 .av-subheading{\nfont-size:15px;\n}\n<\/style>\n<div  class='av-special-heading av-kjf7boep-65265f41ee58bce47ca87c0ac02def41 av-special-heading-h5 blockquote modern-quote  avia-builder-el-0  el_before_av_textblock  avia-builder-el-first '><h5 class='av-special-heading-tag '  itemprop=\"headline\"  >Coop m\u00e9dia de Montr\u00e9al &#8211; May 9, 2013<\/h5><div class='av-subheading av-subheading_below'><p>(en anglais)<\/p>\n<\/div><div class=\"special-heading-border\"><div class=\"special-heading-inner-border\"><\/div><\/div><\/div>\n<section  class='av_textblock_section av-kj93d4qd-dd61bc7995b7257b784c7dc62b399b0f '   itemscope=\"itemscope\" itemtype=\"https:\/\/schema.org\/BlogPosting\" itemprop=\"blogPost\" ><div class='avia_textblock'  itemprop=\"text\" ><p><a href=\"http:\/\/montreal.mediacoop.ca\/story\/r%C3%A9gie-du-lentement\/16944\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignleft wp-image-7155 size-square\" src=\"https:\/\/genese.qc.ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/12\/2013-0509-coop-media-180x180.jpg\" alt=\"Coop media - R\u00e9gie du lentement\" width=\"180\" height=\"180\" srcset=\"https:\/\/genese.qc.ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/12\/2013-0509-coop-media-180x180.jpg 180w, https:\/\/genese.qc.ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/12\/2013-0509-coop-media-80x80.jpg 80w, https:\/\/genese.qc.ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/12\/2013-0509-coop-media-36x36.jpg 36w, https:\/\/genese.qc.ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/12\/2013-0509-coop-media-120x120.jpg 120w, https:\/\/genese.qc.ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/12\/2013-0509-coop-media-450x450.jpg 450w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 180px) 100vw, 180px\" \/><\/a>On a wintry afternoon, housing rights activists and community organizers took their time in protesting through downtown Montreal, taking over an hour to walk just a few city blocks. The February 28 \u201cslow march\u201d ended at the offices of the R\u00e9gie du logement, Quebec\u2019s rental board, which protestors argue has become paralyzed by rising wait times.<\/p>\n<p>The R\u00e9gie\u2019s 2011-12 annual report revealed some grim numbers: the average wait time for hearings for general civil cases\u2014covering everything from rat or mold infestations to repairs to inadequate heat\u2014has reached a record 20.3 months. Wait times vary widely across the province, from three months in Gasp\u00e9, to 19 months in Rouyn-Noranda, to a full 25 months in Trois-Rivi\u00e8res, followed closely by the Montreal region at 24 months.<\/p>\n<div id=\"attachment_6410\" style=\"width: 505px\" class=\"wp-caption alignright\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-6410\" class=\"wp-image-6410 size-portfolio\" src=\"https:\/\/genese.qc.ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/12\/2013-0228-DSC_0050-3-495x400.jpg\" alt=\"Contre la R\u00e9gie du lentement \/ Against long wait times at the Rental Board\" width=\"495\" height=\"400\" srcset=\"https:\/\/genese.qc.ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/12\/2013-0228-DSC_0050-3-495x400.jpg 495w, https:\/\/genese.qc.ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/12\/2013-0228-DSC_0050-3-845x684.jpg 845w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 495px) 100vw, 495px\" \/><p id=\"caption-attachment-6410\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">In chilly late February, Montrealers took part in a \u00ab\u00a0slow march\u00a0\u00bb to denounce the increase in wait times for complaints filed with Quebec&rsquo;s rental board. (PHOTO: Project Genesis.<\/p><\/div>\n<p>This is bad news for tenants who are forced to live in often unsafe or unsanitary conditions while waiting for the R\u00e9gie to set a hearing date. Tenants are left in a state of uncertainty, with no way to check the status of their case. Some end up taking care of the problem at their own expense, or moving out.<\/p>\n<p>This, however, is often not an option for low-income tenants, who lack both resources and options\u2014social housing, for example, is similarly plagued with excruciating wait times.<\/p>\n<p>\u00ab\u00a0People have this need for affordable housing, so they can\u2019t just move out,\u00a0\u00bb says Claire Abraham, a community organizer with Project Genesis, a Montreal non-profit that provides individual services on tenant\u2019s rights in the southwest borrough of C\u00f4te-des-Neiges\u2013Notre-Dame-de-Gr\u00e2ce (CDN\u2013NDG). \u201cThey\u2019re on a welfare check and can only afford an apartment that\u2019s $500 or less. People often consider putting up with poor housing conditions as part of the deal.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>This has serious implications for the health of tenants, especially young children. In CDN\u2013NDG, one-third of apartments occupied by families with young children have mold.<\/p>\n<p>\u00ab\u00a0Anything related to the health and security of the tenant is considered to be an urgent case,\u00a0\u00bb says Genevi\u00e8ve Trudel, spokesperson for the R\u00e9gie. \u00ab\u00a0And urgent cases are seen within 1.8 months.\u00a0\u00bb Housing groups disagree, arguing that many cases involving tenants&rsquo; health and safety suffer the longest wait times.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThey\u2019re stuck in a legal limbo,\u201d says Fred Burrill, a community organizer with Projet d\u2019organisation populaire, d\u2019information et de regroupement (POPIR), another tenants&rsquo; rights organization serving the city&rsquo;s southwest, in the neigbourhoods of Saint-Henri, Little Burgundy, Cote-Saint-Paul and Ville-\u00c9mard. \u201cIn the time between when a tenant files a request and when the R\u00e9gie judge makes a decision, there is nothing for that tenant to do, legally, to fix their problem.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Cases are examined by recourse, meaning the course of action requested by the claimant. A recourse could be a demand that a landlord restore heat, call an exterminator, repair a leak or reduce a rent increase; or that a tenant pay lapsed rent, repair damage or be evicted. Officially, however, cases are organized into five categories: non-payment of rent, rent fixation and revision, and urgent, priority and general civil cases.<\/p>\n<p>In 1998, the wait time for all civil cases was three months. This leaped to 12.6 months in 2003 and has steadily increased since. The R\u00e9gie denies there\u2019s a problem, and it has only set a goal of 16 months for general civil case wait times, a number housing activists say is still far too high.<\/p>\n<p>Not everyone is kept waiting so long. The wait time for cases of non-payment of rent\u2014brought exclusively by landlords\u2014has for the last decade remained relatively constant, at just six weeks. The difference in wait times for tenants and landlords has become so large that housing activists are calling it a two-tiered system.<\/p>\n<p>The R\u00e9gie was set up in 1980 with a mandate of being accessible and impartial, as well as prompt. It was to be an administrative tribunal to which all parties would have equal and fair access. This accessibility and impartiality is now in question. Housing activists argue that although tenants have rights at the R\u00e9gie, they are effectively denied the ability to exercise these rights. It is, as Burrill says, an \u201cillusion of rights.\u201d<\/p>\n<div id=\"attachment_6413\" style=\"width: 505px\" class=\"wp-caption alignleft\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-6413\" class=\"wp-image-6413 size-portfolio\" src=\"https:\/\/genese.qc.ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/12\/2013-0228-DSC_0096-2-495x400.jpg\" alt=\"Contre les d\u00e9lais \u00e0 la R\u00e9gie du lentement \/ Against long wait times at the Rental Board\" width=\"495\" height=\"400\" \/><p id=\"caption-attachment-6413\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">Protesters deliver an \u00ab\u00a0eviction notice\u00a0\u00bb to Quebec&rsquo;s rental board to highlight the drastic rise in waiting times for tenants&rsquo; complaints filed with the organization. (PHOTO: Project Genesis)<\/p><\/div>\n<p>Still, the R\u00e9gie denies prioritizing cases brought by landlords. \u201cTenants and landlords are treated equally,\u201d says Trudel. \u201cWe treat each and every case based on the type of recourse that is asked for, so they\u2019re really treated on a case-by-case basis.\u201d<\/p>\n<div>\n<p>The evidence suggests otherwise. Non-payment cases brought by landlords account for 90 per cent of the increase in cases brought to the R\u00e9gie since 1998, and yet wait times for this category have not increased. Civil cases brought by tenants, on the other hand, have only increased by eight per cent, yet they have seen the greatest increase in wait times.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cRegardless of how they spin it,\u201d says Burrill, \u201cin terms of the way they process cases, the R\u00e9gie essentially functions as a kind of clearing house for evictions. \u201d<\/p>\n<p>The R\u00e9gie\u2019s impartiality has also been called into question by recent actions of R\u00e9gie president Luc Harvey, who was found to have fudged the numbers in 2011 to artificially lower the official wait times of general civil cases.<\/p>\n<div>\n<p>Project Genesis and POPIR are heading up protests in Montreal as part of a larger provincial campaign to restore the R\u00e9gie system\u2014and thus restore tenant rights. \u201cWe\u2019ve been organizing creative actions, keeping steady pressure on the R\u00e9gie,\u201d says Abraham.<\/p>\n<p>The recent \u201cslow march\u201d follows an autumn protest that offered \u201ccreative\u00a0\u00bb ways of staying warm through the winter without adequate heating. \u201cPeople were running on the spot, or wrapped in tinfoil,\u201d says Abraham. Though organized with a sense of humour, the issue is serious. Housing groups routinely see families who spend an entire winter, sometimes two, without proper heating.<\/p>\n<p>Media feedback around the campaign has been positive, though it has yet to translate into concrete structural change at the R\u00e9gie, says Abraham. Severe criticism by the Quebec Ombudswoman has also had little effect.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWe need them to change their way of prioritizing cases at the R\u00e9gie, fundamentally,\u201d says Abraham. \u201cOrganizing cases by the recourse asked for is a serious problem, because it means that simple cases that won\u2019t take very long in the hearing are heard quickly. But that has nothing to do with the actual severity of the problem that the tenant is living in.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Housing groups want cases dealt with on a first-come, first-served basis; cases dealing with urgent matters of health and safety to be heard within 72 hours; and all cases to be heard within three months. They are also asking the Quebec government to fund the R\u00e9gie with adequate resources to do this, primarily through hiring more judges.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cIt\u2019s the same problem that exists in all social services in Quebec, which is essentially that the social problems caused by a context of austerity can\u2019t be solved under a government model of cutbacks,\u201d says Burrill. \u201cThe R\u00e9gie is completely overextended. It\u2019s operating under a context of shortage.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Although the R\u00e9gie itself has not faced cutbacks, housing rights activists argue that its budget remains insufficient to deal with the current housing situation.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThe government&rsquo;s <em>laissez-faire<\/em> approach to housing, refusing to fund programs while approving condo developments left and right, has created a housing crisis, which in turn increases the pressure on the R\u00e9gie,\u201d says Burrill.<\/p>\n<div>\n<p>The R\u00e9gie hired eight more judges at the end of 2012, for a total of 42, though they have yet to make a difference. \u201cIt takes several months before they are fully operational,\u201d says Trudel. \u201cIt will take close to another fiscal year before they are fully accustomed to their task.\u201d Will eight judges be enough to tackle both the backlog and the wait times? \u201cHopefully, yes.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Again, the numbers suggest otherwise. Sylvain Gaudreault, minister responsible for the R\u00e9gie, recently suggested that each experienced R\u00e9gie judge can make 1,200 judgments a year, meaning 42 judges could deal with 50,400 cases. Last year, however, the R\u00e9gie received around 78,400 cases. The amount would leave 28,000 cases unheard (a further 23 judges&rsquo; worth), nearly doubling the already 30,000-case backlog.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cEight new judges is a good start,\u201d says Burrill, \u201cbut the problem is a deep one. The housing market and the situation for tenants is in total crisis, and it requires a comprehensive overhaul of the way the hiring practices are done and the amount of money that\u2019s put into it.\u201d<\/p>\n<p><em><strong>Correy Baldwin<\/strong> is a writer and editor living in Montreal. He is an Editor-at-Large at the Media Co-op.<\/em><\/p>\n<p><strong><a href=\"https:\/\/genese.qc.ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/12\/2013-0509-coop-media-regie-du-lentement.pdf\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">PDF<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div><\/section>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Coop m\u00e9dia de Montr\u00e9al &#8211; May 9, 2013<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6,"featured_media":7155,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[281],"tags":[242],"class_list":["post-6216","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-dans-les-medias","tag-delais-a-la-regie-du-logement"],"publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-06-11 04:55:32","action":"change-status","newStatus":"draft","terms":[],"taxonomy":"category","extraData":[]},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/genese.qc.ca\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6216","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/genese.qc.ca\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/genese.qc.ca\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/genese.qc.ca\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/6"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/genese.qc.ca\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6216"}],"version-history":[{"count":10,"href":"https:\/\/genese.qc.ca\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6216\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":17029,"href":"https:\/\/genese.qc.ca\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6216\/revisions\/17029"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/genese.qc.ca\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/7155"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/genese.qc.ca\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6216"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/genese.qc.ca\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6216"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/genese.qc.ca\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6216"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}