How to Rent in Montreal’s Housing Crisis
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How to Rent in Montreal’s Housing Crisis

Lynn Park & Scarlet Fountain

Properly addressing a housing crisis begins with understanding the immediate realities of tenancy and housing insecurity. We need to enter the worlds of the vulnerable and see for ourselves. In their publication How To Rent in Montreal’s Housing Crisis, Park and Fountain intimately document these realities through conversations and interviews. This publication aims to encapsulate the collective tenant experience and thus serves as a rallying call for solidarity.

Thematic

Professor

Location

Date

Expressions of Power and Resistance

Marie-Sophie Banville

Montreal, Qc

May 2020

1. Focusing on tenant’s immediate experiences

In times of increasing uncertainty, general discourse concerning the housing crisis and the structural systems of the housing market can easily become overwhelming. In a whirlwind of opinion pieces and new studies, it is easy to forget the immediate repercussions of this system on people’s lives. The phenomena of displacement sees tenants being pushed out through “renovictions”, increased rent gaps and speculative developments are all movements imposed upon people. The publication How To Rent in Montreal’s Housing Crisis addresses, challenges, and resists these coercive trends by focusing on the efforts surrounding housing and gentrification by tenants and renters at risk. 

2. Tenancy during COVID-19

The COVID-19 pandemic significantly impacted our project’s original strategy for interviews and information-gathering. We redirected our project towards online interviews over phone and video calls, which were recorded and transcribed for the publication. This change also shifted our focus to include the effects of the coronavirus on tenancy. 

In light of the pandemic, the Régie du Logement has suspended all eviction hearings, by order of the Quebec government. They also recommend against apartment visits, though they have not banned them. Many tenants in Montreal are facing difficult situations - moving during the pandemic, trying to search for apartments, dealing with unwanted and unsafe showings by their landlords. In addition, Montreal tenants have organized rent strikes, and are engaging with landlords and banks in the face of financial instability. 

2.2. A publication as rallying tool

This publication is meant to be both a physical manifestation of solidarity among tenants, and a means of relating  experiential knowledge through first-person accounts. We reached out to friends and acquaintances, heard directly how they handled various situations, and what they learned from these experiences. With these testimonies, we hope to provide knowledge and resources for at-risk or inexperienced tenants to be able to survive in an increasingly harsh and inhospitable market. Together, these stories complement more traditional resources and references providing support with legal, financial, and interpersonal advice. 

We have been accessing and engaging with a broader tenant community through online platforms and resources. The facebook page Chez Queer, for example, is a housing group for the queer community to connect and help one  another to find housing, transfer leases, and seek advice. We have also been following discussions and actions undertaken in the Rent Strike/Grève De Loyer - Montréal Facebook group. which has served as a rallying point for Montreal tenant mobilization, as well as a source for information and advice for renters facing difficult situations. Other websites consulted included the Concordia Student Union’s Housing and Job Bank (HOJO), likehome.info (the student reference on housing in Montreal), and myrent.quebec (a user-submitted database of current and former rent prices around the city).

3. The final format

Our original plan had been  to publish the completed project in a zine format, and distribute it publicly. Since the pandemic prevents such measures, we have instead opted to create an online PDF document, which serves as a digital zine that can be distributed widely through social media without risk of spreading the virus or breaking social distancing practices. We hope to publish the completed zine in several of the aforementioned facebook communities.

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About

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The Office of Rules and Norms (ORN) is an arts-based transdisciplinary collective that engages with regulations, the rule of law and cultural norms. These engagements reveal, comprehend, play with, subvert, and transcend current ways of understanding and acting in relation to regulatory forces in order to make room for more equitable alternatives. In its attempts to query legal and behavioral urban infrastructures, the ORN specifically deploys art and design practice, culture, and methods along three axes:
Art as Subversion | Intervening in grey areas of regulation
Art as Pedagogy | Making public various forces and forms of influence
Art as Decision-Making | Reorienting modes of knowing and deliberating