Property owners can evict troublesome tenants in three months or so, and yet it takes two years or more to force negligent landlords to make repairs or heat apartments properly.

So found two community groups—Project Genesis and POPIR-Comité—after examining 14 years of rental board annual reports and conducting an access to information request.

“When it was clear that the rental board didn’t have enough money to hear all cases in a timely fashion, they decided to prioritize eviction notice cases ahead of everything else,” said Claire Abraham, a community organizer with Project Genesis. “Clearly, only landlords evict people.”

The two groups organized a day of action last Thursday, February 28. The event included a full day of workshops to train 38 tenants how to fight for their rights at the YWCA. It finished with a slow-motion demonstration at the corner of Crescent and René-Lévesque.

During the event, the community groups released information showing that delays for tenant claims have been longer than those for landlord claims since 1998. For tenants with claims, the wait increased from between 10 and 20 weeks at the beginning of 2003 to 55 weeks in 2004. Since then, the average wait for tenants’ cases has continued to range between 60 and 90 weeks. Most cases that involved non-payment of leases, however, continue to be heard in less than 10 weeks.

A table of all the data they collected showed that landlords have made 80 to 90% of the claims the rental board hears anually since the 1998-1999 fiscal year. Last year, for example, landlords made 68,625 claims, while tenants made 9,096, or 11.7% of them.

“The rental board is functioning more as an eviction tribunal than a fair court for housing issues,” said Antoine Morneau-Sénéchal, the community organizer with POPIR-Comité Logement. “We’re asking for all cases to be heard within three months, and that they be heard on a first-come first-served basis, except for urgent cases, which should be only those in which the health or security of someone is at risk.”