“Serial Renovator”: Tenants who refuse to let their new landlord take over

The owner of a new building, “serial renovator” Henry Zavriev, threatens to evict about fifteen tenants who do not want to leave the apartments they have occupied for more than 20 years.

• Read more: “Since he bought the building, we’ve been living a dream”: Tenants protest against ‘super renovator’

• Read more: Affordable housing: Montreal invests $5.6 million to buy Manoir Lafontaine

• Read more: The rent on his old apartment is skyrocketing from $715/month

“I live with my 70-year-old mother, 20-year-old daughter and her 6-month-old baby. Instead it has been four generations, who will help us? “Even if I accept money to leave, I’m a loser,” says Marie-Lise Tranquille, who has lived for 21 years in her apartment on rue Poupart in Montreal’s Ville-Marie borough.

Two days after Henry Savriev bought his building, M^me Tranquille and his neighbors began receiving visits from assistants of the 29-year-old real estate investor known for his “renovation” practices.

He has more than 1,000 doors in Quebec and is responsible for hundreds of evacuations in retirement homes (RPA) such as Mont-Carmel, Château Bérivage and Seigneurie de Salaberry. In addition to the RPAs that seek to renovate luxury rental apartments, Zavriyev is also attacking apartment buildings in Saint-Laurent, Anjou, Ville-Marie, Rosemont-La Petite-Patrie, Le Plateau-Mont-Royal.

“In three weeks [un employé de Zavriyev] “He came to see me three times to encourage me to quit,” says Mr.^me Quieter paying $600 for 4 1/2.

Since then, Mr. Every day she worries about a new visit or call from one of Zavriev’s employees.

It’s the same story for his mother, Liz.

“4 1/2 in Montreal is $1,500! I don’t even get that amount a month! We are not rich,” she counters.

The latter, Mr. He refuses any payment from Zavriev and forces her to leave. The latter would have given certain tenants up to $20,000.

“I don’t want to touch the money made on poor people like us,” he added furiously.

Dollars to exit

Mathieu Barysev-Hamel and Mr. Zavrievin was soon called by his servant.

“He directly asked me how much I wanted to leave. Many of us were invited, and two of the fifteen neighbors accepted an offer,” says the student of DEP in welding.

He pays $820 each month, with his roommate, for 4 1/2. It is now impossible to find an apartment at that price in the neighborhood. Doing a quick search, there are no similar sized apartments nearby that rent for under $1400.

“It would force me to live with four or five people, which I don’t want!” explains the 29-year-old.

For their part, Keenan Polonczak and his wife, Maude, hope to find a way to stay in the $570 4 1/2 they’ve lived in for 11 years.

“We are not ready to leave, we want to stay close to us. Anyway, there is nothing or everything is very expensive,” says the man who describes how he was able to set up his small bookbinding business thanks to his low rent.

Loss of quality of life

As of March 27, tenants were surprised to see the cleanup in their backyard.

“It ended up with absolutely nothing in the two-meter excavation. We have a huge hole full of waste that wasn’t there before, and no safety corridor when requested by the Montreal fire department,” explains Maud Polonczak.

For tenants, if you’ve seen Henri Zavriev’s methods of pushing out other Montreal tenants, this is no doubt a technique to push them over the edge.

“They uprooted my entire vegetable garden, which I had been tending for three years, without asking. They took it with a backhoe,” laments Frederick, a tenant who has lived there for four years.

New rules

Tenants also received an 11-page document listing 24 new rules they must follow if they renew their leases. Newspaper I was able to consult.

In particular, we read that a tenant with animals can only keep one, “only if he proves by a written medical note” […] The need to protect animals […] For animal therapeutic reasons.

However, tenants have the right to refuse the landlord’s new terms and renew the lease. All together, they have decided to stop their new owner from achieving his goals.

“We know it’s only the beginning, but we won’t let it go,” breathes Fabian Collet, who has lived in the building for four years.

Contacted by NewspaperHenry Zavriev did not respond to our questions.