Montreal's Housing Hotline fundraising to keep decades-old service running

CTV News

2 days ago

Arnold Bennett wants to be there for tenants in trouble and is fundraising to keep the Montreal Housing Hotline connected.
Moving day is just a month away for Quebecers, and Arnold Bennett wants to be there for tenants in trouble.
He's been running the Montreal Housing Hotline since the 1970s.
'People call with all kinds of questions. We can do advocacy in the sense of steering them in the right direction and proposing strategies and referring them to lawyers and other things that the rental board will not do,' said Bennett.
He says he about 30 calls per day, and the hotline is open from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. Monday to Friday.
All expenses are paid out of his own pocket, and now he's asking the community for help. Earlier this week, Bennett set up a GoFundMe hoping it will help cover some of the costs – which include phone and internet bills, electricity, technical support and a few staff members.
It's also one of the few resources for anglophones in Quebec.
The province is in the throes of a housing crunch, and Bennett is no stranger to housing policy.
He says legislation has had some major improvements since the he started a housing clinic in the '80s. He was among those who fought for bans on condo conversions and pushed back against renovictions.
Bennett
Arnold Bennett wants to be there for tenants in trouble and is fundraising to keep the Montreal Housing Hotline connected. (Swidda Rassy/CTV)
He remembers when rent increases between 12 and 30 per cent were allowed, 'and it had extremely serious effects on people.'
Now he says politicians are rolling protections back.
'The right of tenants to be able to transfer or sign a lease was undermined by the current government, causing a serious problem in terms of being able to avoid discrimination in housing,' he said.
'The last three years got very bad, and that's combined with another cyclical problem, a housing shortage. And that housing shortage means that the door is open to gouging and units aren't available.'
The problem isn't just hitting low-income families – it's extended well into the middle class.
'Everybody's having problems,' said Bennett. 'There's never enough services … Everybody's short-staffed and there's time constraints.'
And Bennett isn't just getting calls from Montrealers. He says people from Laval, Quebec City and the townships reach out because 'there was nothing where they were, especially if they were anglophones or allophones.'
Bob Jones
Bob Jones was one of Arnold Bennett's first hires for his housing hotline. He calls Bennett a 'guiding light' for tenants. (Swidda Rassy/CTV)
Bob Jones remembers when he first started volunteering with Bennett in the late '80s. A friend of his needed help with a repossession case, but Bennett was seeing hundreds of people every week.
So, Jones decided to volunteer. Three months later he was one of Bennett's first hires.
He remembers visiting tenants who had issues with their landlords who cut off their electricity and calling the police.
'We'd say, there's a theft of services here. Sometimes, we'd have to explain the process to the police, because they weren't that knowledgeable in rental law, and we tried to get the problem solved,' Jones told CTV News.
'Sometimes it involved sitting down, writing a letter. Sometimes it involved calling the landlord and seeing if they could fix it.'
He says Bennett's dedication is needed. Even on weekends, Bennett will sometimes keep the phone line open.
Jones calls him a 'guiding light' at a time where rents are skyrocketing, and people are facing evictions and false repossessions.
'If something doesn't happen soon, there'll be more people homeless on the streets than able to live in their apartments,' said Jones.
'Because right now for NDG, the average rent for three and a half is $1,300 that is unaffordable for most people working minimum wage or even two jobs at minimum wage … and some tenants don't know their rights.'
Though he's hoping the community will have his back, Bennett says he's prepared to keep going 'hand to mouth.'
Nothing will stop him from being there for tenants.
'Retire? You mean, when they carry me out on a stretcher. It'll have to be involuntary,' he said.
With files from CTV News Montreal's Swidda Rassy