“I won't stay here another night!”: His room is not what he was promised

No curtains, no cockroaches, no questionable expenses: A South American worker was in for a nasty surprise when he walked into a room he rented for $840 a month in Montreal's Olympic Village.

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“I'm not staying here another night! No internet, no curtains in the room. I also saw a cockroach on the floor,” Jose Pablo Chaves Espinoza denied.

A 22-year-old from Costa Rica came to Montreal to work in the restaurant business for a year. He is looking for a furnished room in an apartment where everything is included.

He stated that the place, at 12^e The floor did not match the advertisement he had seen on the internet or the model accommodation he had visited last week 1^er The other half of the village is the floor of the pyramid.

The room is divided into two bedrooms by plastic panels, bookcases and accordion doors. No table to eat.

Questionable charges

The worker can't believe the condition of the common kitchen.

“There's only two shelves in the refrigerator for four, no microwave, no dishwasher,” he notes angrily.

José Pablo Chaves Espinoza explained that there was no microwave or dishwasher in the kitchen.

Photo by Anouk Lebel

In the advertisement photo viewed by Jose Pablo Chaves Espinoza, there is a dishwasher and a microwave.

Photo courtesy of Jose Pablo Chaves Espinoza

He was even more disappointed because he had already paid nearly $2,000 for the room. He paid his first month's rent, a “service fee” of $250, but also a security deposit for the last month's rent, an amount the landlord has no right to demand in Quebec.

The wall separating the living room from one of the bedrooms is plastic.

Photo by Anouk Lebel

The young worker did business with the Toronto agency Harrington Housing, which rents rooms in more than thirty subdivided apartments in the Olympic Village without a permit from the City of Montreal.

Not the only one

The Journal In another building on rue Sherbrooke Est in Montreal, the agency spoke to two other tenants who were not satisfied with the rooms they rented.

“They are not individual rooms. I slept in a room divided in two by cardboard walls,” said Ola, a student from Nigeria who rented a room last year.

Although the apartment was advertised for women only, Harrington felt uncomfortable renting an adjoining room to a man. “All they offered me was to move to another building where the room was beyond my capacity,” she said.

Jose Pablo Chaves Espinoza believes that his room does not live up to the announcement.

Screenshot

Frenchman Remi Grzeczkovich, who has been training in Montreal this spring, has been waiting to get his $150 security deposit back more than two weeks after leaving.

Same rights

In a case like this, tenants have the same rights as other tenants in Quebec.

“When you are doing business with this type of agency, you have to be very careful. Often, corners are cut when it comes to local law. What I have seen is that it is often the student clientele, the newbies who are caught, the more vulnerable people,” underlines M.^e Antoine Morneau-Senechal is a lawyer specializing in housing law.

Harrington Housing did not respond to our requests for an interview.

Is your room not what you were promised? Your appeals to the Administrative Housing Tribunal (TAL):

– request the termination of the lease or rental agreement by proving to TAL that free informed consent was not given;

– Contact TAL to obtain items promised under a lease or contract;

– Tenant may require paper lease on official TAL form.

Source: M^e Antoine Morneau-Senechal