Housing inspections to target slumlords

Four-year action gives inspectors power to issue hefty tickets on the spot

Montreal will triple the number of housing inspections it completes within the next four years, Mayor Valérie Plante announced Thursday.

The announcement is a part of the city’s four-year action plan to tackle unsafe and unsanitary living conditions.

The plan specifies that the city will complete 31,200 inspections by fall 2021 — significantly fewer than Plante’s campaign promise of 100,000 inspections over five years.

Magda Popeanu, city counsellor for Côté-des-Neiges, said the number announced Thursday came from studying how many buildings in the city were deemed to be at-risk while taking into account how many inspections workers can reasonably accomplish.

Popeanu said new technology will also allow inspectors to be more productive.

Plante said the city has already increased the number of inspectors from 10 to 23. The money needed to pay the new hires was included in the 2018 budget, Popeanu said.

C.D.N—N.D.G Mayor Sue Montgomery also said she plans to use her borough’s $300,000 surplus from the previous year to address the issue in the neighbourhood the city has identified as being especially problematic.

As of Thursday, Montrealers will also be able to browse a database of exterminations completed throughout the city.

This is in line with Plante’s early promises to make public information about the city ’s repeat offenders.

The mayor said by the end of her mandate, she also hopes to have a public database of fines issued to property owners, though no specific timeline has been presented.

During her mayoral campaign, Plante promised that the city would become more proactive in regard to unsanitary and unsafe housing — a problem she previously said affects one-third of households in Montreal.

Following an apartment fire in a building that appeared to be subdivided without proper permits at the end of April, Montgomery also vowed to take action against slumlords in C.D.N—N.D.G.

“What’s happened in the past is that we haven’t had an administration that took this issue seriously and so landlords have gotten away with a lot,” Montgomery said Thursday.

To enforce preventive action, Montreal has revised the way in which fines for property owners can be issued.

As opposed to the previous system of needing an open file to issue a fine, inspectors can give tickets on the spot, like a parking ticket, Plante said.

An individual landlord can be fined a minimum of $1,500 for not ensuring the safety of tenants for a first infraction, and a corporation can be penalized at least $2,000. Those fines increase to a maximum $15,000 and $20,000, respectively, for subsequent infractions.

Montgomery also said the city will have room in the budget to complete necessary renovations itself, forwarding the bill to the landlord in case the issue has not already been resolved. If they do not pay the city back, Montgomery said the city can then deduct the amount from the future sale of the property.