Montreal to publish names of delinquent landlords in bid to improve rental availability

The City of Montreal is making public the names of delinquent landlords and other housing data in the hope that landlords will repair shoddy housing and improve the city's shrinking rental stock.

The city is releasing information on its housing office's health inspections of rental units and publishing the list of landlords who have been found guilty of an infraction and fined.

"It is, of course, reasonable to believe that the publication of those lists of those people in violation of the bylaw will have a deterrent effect on any tempted to disregard those rules in the future," said Craig Sauv, Montreal's associate councillor responsible for housing.

Montreal's vacancy rate is the lowest it's been in 15 years, pegged by the Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation at 1.5 per cent in 2019, compared to 1.9 per cent in 2018.

Thursday's release of housing data is the fourth such release by the Projet Montral administration all aimed at encouraging certain building owners to repair their rental units and putting more apartments on the market.

Previous releases of data included reports of bed bug complaints to exterminators, notices of deterioration and the results of high-priority inspection indicators, which provide a portrait of the health of Montreal's rental stock.

"In the short term, [the data release] is not something that's going to help a renter looking for a home," said Coun. Robert Beaudry, the executive committee member responsible for housing.

However, Beaudry says, in order to act, you need information, so taken with other measures, making this data public will help.

"The city can share it with all of its partners, such as housing committees, and with our community partners, who can work to interpret the information and propose new initiatives," he said.

More inspectors welcome

Housing advocate Maxime Roy-Allard likes what the Projet Montral administration is doing, but he's not sure the measures will make a huge difference for now. He says hiring more housing inspectors will speed things up.

"It will reduce the waits for files to be done so that tenants can put forward their files at the rental board and to fight back against their landlord to get them to fix their apartment and actually to get money back if the landlord didn't respect his obligation," said Roy-Allard.

Sauv said the city is actually increasing the number of housing inspections it does.

He said the city and boroughs have carried out more than 15,000 inspections in the first two years of Montreal's action plan on housing, almost halfway to the administration's stated goal 31,200 inspections during its mandate.

In a tight rental market, Sauv advises people looking for a new place to make sure they sign a new lease before giving up the lease of the place they're living in now. He also encourages tenants not to accept undue rental increases.