Bed bugs, piles of garbage, doors with no locks and no water or electricity for days on end. Sounds like a nightmare but it's a reality for tenants in at least four buildings in the Plateau Mont-Royal borough.
The residents claim their landlords are trying to push them out of their homes.
"They stopped cleaning the building," said one man, who spoke with CTV anonymously. "Outside, for months, you could see mountains of trash. It was really stinky. And inside the building, there was zero cleaning, also. We also had to face a lot of security issues, because they removed the lock on the main entrance."
Complaints have been made to the Regie du Logement, but so far the tenants say they feel they're alone in their fight, which is starting to take its toll.
"When can I cook? It started taking a toll on my mental, physical and emotional state," said one man.
City inspectors visited one of the buildings Tuesday to check on the current conditions.
Local tenants' group Comite Logement said cases like this a part of a bigger problem in the area: gentrification.
"It is certainly bigger. This is four buildings, four owners that we know, that we've done a lot of research on with the help of the tenants that came to us," said Simon Roy.
Roy said his group is in the process of building a list of landlords who are accused of similar behaviour.
"Every day our help lines are really busy with a lot of addresses," he said.