Questions swirl around evacuated buildings in Pointe St-Charles

On Wednesday afternoon, workmen caulked plywood sheets over the glass at the entrance of a Centre Street apartment building and then an inspector put up a notice expressly prohibiting anyone from living there until further notice.

“It’s very disappointing to see this,” said Marie Valérie, who represents the numbered company that acts as the building’s landlord. Inspectors, she said, “are still coming back and in different ways.” That address and adjacent Chateaguay building were evacuated in February.

Dozens of tenants were obliged to leave their homes in the cold after the city determined the buildings were unfit for habitation.

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The city wrote the landlord in August to say that enough improvements have been made to allow tenants to return, but the city appeared to change its mind this week.

The city admits there were communication problems, but contends that they haven’t corrected all the issues that were present in the building.

Although most of the apartments inside the buildings appear to be fully furnished, Valérie said the buildings haven’t been occupied since they were evacuated in February.

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The notices on the doors, however, clearly indicate that an “evacuation” had taken place. When Global News asked the landlord’s lawyer, Mélanie Chapéron, why the city would evacuate an empty building, she replied, “That’s a good question. I don’t know.”