Renovicted in Verdun: New borough rules on apartment combinations don't extend to triplexes

Quinten Sheriff is packing up his belongings, preparing to leave his second-floor apartment in a Verdun triplex.

It's not by choice. Sheriff is being evicted so that his landlord can merge two apartments for his expanding family.

"I wonder what my future may be in Montreal if I have been pushed out of the last neighbourhood that people tell me is affordable and livable," Sheriff said.

What's happening to Sheriff is increasingly common in Montreal. In Verdun, housing advocates are worried that a recently passed bylaw doesn't go far enough to protect these tenants from eviction.

On Nov. 3, the Verdun borough council voted unanimously to amend residential zoning rules. The amendment extended protections against unit mergers in buildings with five units or more. The law also banned subdivisions.

"We were getting a lot of pressure from all sides," said Pierre L'Heureux, a Verdun borough councillor."I know that it's not pleasing to everyone but it's a compromise."

And it leaves people like Sheriff with no protection.

He had been hoping that the new restrictions would extend to triplexes. He says he is now priced out of his neighbourhood and has to move out of the area.

Housing crisis in Verdun

The bylaw passed amid increasing concern that the loss of rental properties is having an effect on the Verdun housing market.

Marie-Andre Mauger, a Verdun councillor, says that between 2004 and 2013, Verdun lost 400 rental properties as a result of unit mergers. That pace seems to be accelerating.In 2020, as of Nov. 3, 61 rentals had disappeared from the market.

The council says more than 70 people wrotein. The Comit d'action des citoyennes et citoyens de Verdun (CACV)had more than 150 residents of Verdun sign an open letter to the council, pushing for the restrictions to apply to triplexes and duplexes.

Steve Baird, a community organizer at the CACV, is disappointed that the borough stopped short of offering merger protections to the smaller buildings.

"If we had in Verdun the version of the bylaw that they have on the Plateau, [Sheriff] wouldn't be facing eviction,"Baird said.

But L'Heureux says different boroughs meandifferent demographics: "There is no solution that fits all the needs across Montreal."

For instance, anew bylaw in VilleraySt-MichelParc-Extensionallows renovations combining two apartments in buildings of six units or fewer, as long as the merged apartment doesn't exceed 2150 square feet.

RosemontLa-Petite-Patrie, as well as MercierHochelaga-Maisonneuve, however, have restricted combinations in triplexes and larger, but not duplexes.

Bairdsaid ofthe Villeray and Verdun rulings, "In the end, all the bylaws adopted in Montreal boroughs are fairly weak in preventing this kind of transformation."

As for Sheriff, he recalls asking his landlord, "Would you take someone in my situation, an unemployed, full-time student who has no salary for the next two years?"

Sheriff will be leaving his apartment before Dec. 21, moving to a smaller apartment in Hochelaga-Maisonneuve.