Unsanitary conditions at affordable housing building in Montreal trigger urgent call for help

Ameen Raa Al-Khabyyr has spent years fighting a losing combat against bottom bugs in his subsidised Montreal flat. 

“I was using this pulverization from Canadian Tire and it’s good for three months,” said Al-Khabyyr, who is in his 70s and struggles with mobility issues. 

“I did it myself, but only where the floor meets the walls.”

He’s a longtime tenant of a 44-unit building in the Côte-des-Neiges–Notre-Dame-de-Grâce borough which offers affordable housing. It’s on Grand Boulevard in NDG, north of Saint-Jacques Street.

Along with bed bugs, there are also rodent and cockroach infestations.

Julie Cormier is the assistant director of the NDG Community Council​​​​​​​​, a non-profit organization that has been working to fix the problem since January after the previous building managers quit. She said her non-profit group inspected the building, finding electrical issues and major infestations. 

The CLSC said its contractors didn’t have the experience or gear necessary to protect themselves from bed bugs.

On Al-Khabyyr’s floor, in a vacant unit, bed bugs have wreaked havoc. The mattress of a former resident is blackened by bed bug droppings. Cormier even pointed out bloodstains left by previous residents who were bitten by the insects.

Besides those looking for subsidized housing, Cormier said several residents live with mental illness and the building serves as a means to get off the streets. 

The NDG Community Council says it recently committed $35,000 to fumigate, but the non-profit needs help because, Cormier explained, “it’s not in our budget. It’s not in our mandate.”

A large generator was installed behind the building to carry out heat treatments for the bed bugs. Éco-Extermination president Peter Kabala has been working on site. He said it’s a major case.

“Cases this serious, we see maybe once a year. Two at most," he said.

Once the extermination is complete, Cormier said her organization wants to ensure all 44 units stay livable and residents don’t end up back on the street.

"Right now, we need help from the health-care system. Because the residents are people who face many challenges — physical health, but also mental health," said Cormier, noting eight of the units are empty because of the bad conditions.

It’s a different non-profit organization that owns the building — Logements Communautaires et Solidaires Grand (LCSG). The LCSG and the previous manager — Société de Gestion Querbes — both deny blame for the current state of the building. 

The two ended their collaboration and have different views on what went wrong.  

The building is governed by a volunteer board facing a “full-time” workload, often taking on responsibilities related to health and social care, said Gulnar Mousak, the head of the LCSG board of directors, who argued the system “doesn’t work.”

She said that while the board is listed as the owner, they are effectively “tied” by the regulations of the Société d’habitation du Québec (SHQ), the provincial agency that oversees affordable housing.

Mousak said the board took proactive steps to manage bed bugs as far back as 2022, including signing monthly checks for extermination services, but did not anticipate the scale of the recent infestation and was unaware of rodent issues until recently.

“The expectations are way beyond our capacity,” she said.

Bed bug, mice infestations at Montreal affordable housing spur urgent call for help

Cormier said the regional health authority needs to place intervention workers in the building permanently, to provide those much-needed health and social services.

“Those people need support,” she said. “We need the system to jump in.”

Care for residents can’t be refused altogether, the statement says, but service requests are reoriented to ensure interventions are safe when a privately contracted worker funded by the CLSC identifies health and safety risks.

“Other residents may access general health and psychosocial services through the usual points of entry, such as calling 811,” the statement says.

In a statement, Santé Québec says it has no direct control over the building's management or quality. 

“Clinical teams remain available to the building's residents who are receiving care to ensure their well-being,” the statement says, but the unsanitary conditions of community housing fall under municipal jurisdiction and the housing tribunal. 

A statement from Côte-des-Neiges–Notre-Dame-de-Grâce says the borough helped co-ordinate preparations for some of the apartments ahead of the fumigation, but it will not provide funding for the pest treatment because the LCSG is considered a private owner.

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