Families in CDN housing co-op face final evacuation, after years of fighting to stay
City says building’s problems have become so dire, it is dangerous to live in
When Bounnhou Sananikone and his family moved from the West Island to a new housing cooperative on Barclay Avenue 20 years ago, it was everything they needed.
It was affordable for their modest income as the owners of a small restaurant, and close to their children's school and the Metro.
It's where they watched those children become adults, and where Sananikone recovered from cancer.
"We're comfortable here," Sananikone said, opening the door from the kitchen onto a back balcony where trees swayed in the summer afternoon.
"But for the past three years, we've lived on edge."
Sometime after 2012, the building — 4741-4751, run by the Co-op Haute-Ville — started having problems.
Residents complained to the city that a mould problem wasn't being fixed by the co-op administration. But the repairs the building needed extended far beyond standard mould.
The Côte-des-Neiges–Notre-Dame-de-Grâce borough says it sent inspectors and conducted some emergency renovations.
Building dangerous to live in, city says
Eventually, the building was referred to the city's central housing organization, the Office municipale de l'habitation (OMHM), and serious structural issues were discovered.
Now, the OMHM says those issues are so dire, after the co-op failed to complete necessary upkeep, the building has become dangerous to live in.
Late last month, it sent a final notice to residents in the 16 units still fit to live in, saying they would have to be out by Oct. 31.
"We are very disappointed because we are fighting for three years already and in the end the city cannot help us," Sananikone said.
Days before she was elected, Montreal Mayor Valérie Plante made a campaign stop in front of the Co-op Haute-Ville. She vowed to help the tenants find a solution.
"At the time, the people, we got a lot of hope," Sananikone said. He and other members say they were made to believe the city would find them another place to live while the foundation gets fixed.
His downstairs neighbour, Iram Aamir, agrees. The OMHM says it will help find members places to live, but Aamir and Sananikone say it was not the outcome they expected.
"Every time, they promise, promise, but they didn't make it," said Aamir, who has lived in the building for 15 years.
Aamir has four children aged 14 years old and younger. She says she's worried about the upheaval having to change schools will cause them, and about whether she will be able to find the same level of services for her nine-year-old son, Ali, who has epilepsy.
Her husband, Aamir Bhatti (whose first name happens to be the same as her last), is the co-op's president. He was in Pakistan, when CBC reported this story, but the cooperative's secretary told CBC that administrative problems stemmed from a past president.
Lack of social housing at heart of issue: advocate
Daniel-Paul Bork, a community organizer for the housing advocacy group Project Genesis, says several different organizations had been trying to secure funding for the co-op, but were repeatedly met with red tape.
Bork says co-ops lacking resources to complete needed repairs is a recurring problem in the city, but that there isn't a system in place for local governments to be able to step in early enough.
"It really comes down to a question of finance, funding and programs available by federal, provincial and municipal governments to deal with the co-op sector," Bork said.
Still, he says, cooperatives are an important part of the city's affordable housing network, which is becoming less accessible with the vacancy rate at a 14-year low in Montreal.
"One of the important things within Cote-des-Neiges is that we need more social housing," he added.
Bork summed up the building's problem, saying, "essentially it's splitting in half."
The OMHM is assuring residents it will help find them new places to live, and give them priority once it has fixed or rebuilt the building.
In the meantime, Aamir and her four children have started packing. Plastic bags filled with clothes cover the bed in the parents' room and linen has been pulled off the shelves.
"It's not easy to move everything and go to another place," Aamir said. "Nobody knows where we are going in the future."