Evicted on three weeks’ notice
Residence waits until last minute to tell 93-year-old she has to move
When 93-year-old Lettie James, who was living autonomously in an apartment in a seniors’ residence in Lachine, was given less than three weeks’ notice that she was to be summarily moved to a sister facility in LaSalle, the retired Anglican priest was livid.
For one, she had no intention of moving to LaSalle, away from family on the West Island. James, now widowed, chose to move to Les Floralies Lachine in 2015 specifically because it was near family.
For another, she had a valid lease: It runs to the end of August. And yet she was given less than three weeks’ notice to vacate her 4½ on the fifth floor of one of the residence towers because the floor was being transformed into a unit for people requiring care.
And she heard about the move the way many of us learn things: through the rumour mill.
“Nobody had said a word to me,” she said.
When her social worker, who heard from the daughter of one of James’s neighbours, told her about the plan, James went to the administrator of Résidence Les Floralies Lachine, Lucie Morissette, to ask when she had planned to tell her she was moving.
James recounted that Morissette responded: “‘We were going to phone your daughter.’
“I am so fed up with people not dealing with me directly,” James said. “And I said, ‘You can’t do this to people. You’re the ones who broke the lease.’ ”
Most of the other residents on the floor “did as they were told and went. Some were angry but were afraid to say anything,” James said.
“This is abuse,” she said. “Not only is it ethically wrong, it is morally wrong — and it is unlawful. It shows no respect. I am not normally an angry person, but I am angry — for me and for the ones who can’t articulate what they are feeling and who just go.
“I want to prevent this happening to other people on other floors.”
James, who is visually impaired because of a stroke and uses a walker but whose demeanour is that of someone considerably younger, moved Tuesday to a studio apartment at the residence.
Staff helped with some packing and with the move, and most of her belongings were put into storage.
She was the last remaining tenant on the floor, and work to gut the apartments was in progress: She lived amid the noise and dust of drilling, banging and walls being torn down. By Wednesday, the front door of her apartment was gone and the kitchen was being dismantled.
What was particularly galling to James was she already moved 15 months earlier, with similarly short notice, from the fourth floor to the fifth because the fourth floor, as the fifth floor is now, was being transformed into a higher-care unit.
“I was on the fourth floor and Monday at suppertime the director got into the elevator and said, ‘By the way, you’re moving Friday.’
“The very idea that these people have twice broken the law means they have no respect,” James said. “This time I will not stay silent.
“I sat down with Madame Morissette and my daughter and grandson and I said, ‘I expected to be treated with dignity and respect and there is neither here.’ I don’t easily lose my temper, but this has really angered me.”
Morrisette acknowledged that James has a lease and that she did not get much advance notice of the move.
“But we were there to help her,” she said. “We met the families and told them we would pay the costs of their moving and buy out their lease.”
Some of the displaced residents went to LaSalle, Morissette said. Others, like James, took studio apartments. The plan now is to continue, with help from her family, to try to find a 3½ or 4½ on the West Island where she can live autonomously and still have some services. If the rent is higher than what she has been paying, Les Floralies is responsible for the difference until the end of the lease.
Huguette Riendeau Leblanc, 84, a former neighbour of James’s, moved to a 3½ in another tower in the Lachine residence — with a week’s notice.
“What is difficult for these people is that they have leases and they pay their rent,” said Pierre Lamond, one of her nephews. “These people are so frustrated: They know the staff and, all of a sudden, they are evicted without really understanding why.”
Some are confused; for others, perhaps there is a language barrier. But few have it in them to fight back, Lamond said.
“They are afraid that management won’t like them — but Madame James has the mental capacity to fight.”