‘You have to fight’: Montreal tenants say renoviction prevented after 2-year battle

renovicted. Now residents of a Plateau-Mont-Royal apartment building in Montreal are declaring victory after their home was purchased by a non-profit organization.It took countless hours of advocacy and protests, but tenants at Manoir Lafontaine say all their hard work has paid off.After two years of anxiety, 78-year-old Francine Goyette is all smiles.“I had happy tears this morning instead of sad tears,” she told Global News.Goyette and others living at the Manoir Lafontaine on Papineau Avenue say they’ve just won a hard-fought battle.“It’s like a dream,” said tenant Renée Thifault, 70.Back in 2021, residents of the 80-unit building right across from Lafontaine Park were plunged into uncertainty when the building owner, Hillpark, told them they’d need to leave their homes for seven months due to renovations.They assumed if they were even able to come back after the work was done, their reasonable rents would skyrocketThey refused to leave.“I told people to fight and I decided to fight,” said Thifault. “I was going to fight until I couldn’t do it anymore.”First came the big blue protest banners on the balconies, which attracted a lot of attention.From there, a movement was born.

Resident Pascal Lavoie, 32, became one of its leaders.“We organized, we did strikes in front of the building. we hired a lawyer to build up the case,” he recounted in an interview.Their fight brought awareness to the city’s affordable housing crisis, and just how many people were getting renovicted.“I was naive and I’m not naive anymore,” said Thifault. “That is sad because renovictions are a way to make money, but also to make many people poorer, to make many people suffer.”After two years of putting pressure on the building’s owner, Hillpark.