Montreal vows to ramp up inspections of multi-unit rental buildings – with ratings published online

Montreal is launching a program to keep owners of multi-unit buildings accountable for the state of their units.

The “Responsible Landlord” program aims to uphold appropriate sanitary conditions for rental properties.

“My message to tenants is that we’re there to help, we’re there to support them because it is a right to live in a sanitary safe, healthy environment,” Montreal Mayor Valérie Plante said at a press conference Wednesday.

The first phase of the rollout, which is being completed this spring, is targeting 90 properties with at least 100 units. Once that phase is completed, the city will move on to buildings with six or more units.

The program aims to detect unsanitary conditions by ramping up preventive and targeted inspections. An emphasis will be placed on older buildings, those that have not been renovated recently, as well as buildings in lower socio-economic neighbourhoods.

“Right now we’re even concentrating on higher numbers of units,” Plante explained. “And it can be in some boroughs, and I don’t wanna name them, but in some areas, sometimes we hear them in the news, it comes often, some landlords, we have names, we know who they are. Some of them we don’t, we might discover new ones.”

The inspections will evaluate the common areas inside and outside each building. The city can impose fines for serious infractions, and notify banks connected to a building’s mortgage or its insurer to alert them of issues in the building if deemed necessary.

The results of the inspections, along with a rating, will be available on the City of Montreal’s website. The city hopes this will make owners more accountable.

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Tenants will be encouraged to file complaints; leaflets will be distributed during inspections to inform tenants how to do so.

“We wanted to proactively detect non-sanitary problems with buildings,” said Benoit Dorais, executive committee vice-chair at the City of Montreal. “Two, we want to correct the situation, so we want to make sure the landlord are taking his responsibilities. And three, we want to make sure that we have more data about buildings in Montreal.”

Officials are hoping to conduct 10,000 inspections in 2024. Bu the official Opposition says the city does not have the capacity to meet their targets with the number of inspectors it currently has.

“When we take a look at the numbers with the inspectors that we have right now at the City of Montreal, it would take 60 years only to inspect the outside of the buildings of six units and more within the City of Montreal. So clearly there’s a problem,” said Ensemble Montréal housing critic Julien Hénault-Ratelle.

The city also announced Wednesday it was providing $30,000 in funding to the “Vivre en Ville” organization to continue expanding its rent registry.

The registry publishes the prices of rental units throughout Quebec in an attempt to reduce significant increases in rent prices.

That funding came as a disappointment for housing advocacy group FRAPRU.

“We’re a bit deceived that the City of Montreal has backed down on the rent registry,” said FRAPRU coordinator Catherine Lussier. “Because at the beginning this was supposed to contain the rent registry, and now they kind of a little bit backed down by just giving a donation to Vivre en Ville for their rent registry.”