Landlords suing Montreal after dangerous building forced tenants out

The tenants at 5998 Parc Ave. have been stranded for three weeks after a wall of the neighbouring building crumbled March 17. (CTV News)

The owners of a building on Parc Avenue, whose tenants were evacuated and couldn’t return home for months, are suing the City of Montreal and the owner of the building next door, which had to be demolished for safety reasons.

BDS Investments, registered to Norm Gordon and David Gordon, is seeking just over $471,000 and accuses both the landlord and city of gross negligence for failing to demolish the neglected building within a reasonable delay.

They say the years of neglect and forced evacuations caused “severe financial and personal damages.”

Some 12 tenants at 5998-6000 Parc Ave., owned by BDS Investments, were forced out of their homes in March after a wall of 5990 collapsed, sending bricks into the living room of one tenant’s apartment.

The city and fire department said the tenants couldn’t go back to get their belongings out due to the threat of further collapse.

Despite the urgency and the fact that demolition was approved in April 2024, no meaningful work was done to push the works forward, the lawsuit says.

In early July, a concerned resident flagged that bricks were falling off the dilapidated building, and two more neighbouring properties were evacuated after the Montreal fire department determined there was “imminent risk.”

Some 30 people were relocated.

After failing to get the owner of the dilapidated building, listed as Habitat 237, to tear down the building, the city finally went ahead with the demolition on Aug. 7 and said it would foot the bill to the landlord.

Tenants were allowed back in their apartments on Aug. 19.

The city had refused Habitat 237’s request for a building construction permit “to move forward with the owners’ right to pursue the development of their dilapidated building,” says the lawsuit.

Still, the lawsuit says the owners “abandoned their building in such a manner as to have inevitably created a dangerous condition for the general public and specifically for the tenants of the neighbouring property.”

They also “knew that the building was in a dilapidated state and deteriorating rapidly, they intentionally did nothing to prevent the ongoing destruction of the brick work on the building,” according to the lawsuit.

Habitat 237 is registered to Daniel Lalonde and Jonathan Pigeon.

Norm Gordon of BDS Investments says eight of his 18 tenants chose to break their leases after being forced out of their units, some of which were damaged.

He added he couldn’t ask his tenants for rent while they were unable to enter their apartments. He and his business partners want to recover losses with additional exemplary and moral damages.

The lawsuit alleges the property at 5990 Parc Ave. was left in disrepair for over a decade and that his tenants were evacuated on four separate occasions since 2022.

Gordon argues the evacuations were done without court orders or advance notice and were “not at all necessary” and “a total abuse of [the city’s] authority.”

He argues that if the demolition was urgently needed and the building was an imminent danger, the city would have moved on the file more quickly.

“If this would have happened to a young landlord, someone in their 20s or 30s, it would bankrupt them,” he said.

“Imagine the stress that went to tenants when you get kicked out of your apartment on a moment’s notice. No heads up, no, nothing, no court order, no date of return. People had no idea how long they were going to be out for, and they don’t even give you a chance to go in and get your stuff,” he added.

The city declined to comment on the lawsuit due to ongoing legal proceedings.