Tenants stranded after neighbouring building wall collapses

When Mikaela Germani came home on Monday evening, she found her living room trashed with the window smashed and a pile of bricks on her sofa.

Germani noticed the building next to hers on Parc Avenue was starting to fall apart in recent months.

She flagged the issues to the city several times, but around 6 p.m. on Monday she got a call from her landlord saying a wall next door had collapsed.

“Firefighters told me that had I been sitting on the couch at the time, ‘we wouldn’t be having this conversation right now,” she told CTV News.

When a wall of 5992 Parc Avenue crumbled on Monday, the building next door had to be evacuated for the tenants’ safety. Luckily, no one was injured.

Germani said most of tenants of the 12-unit building are staying with friends or family but have no idea when they’ll be able to return home.

The fire department said they will have to wait until 5992 Parc Avenue is demolished. The Red Cross took in two families who will be temporarily relocated.

Gordon Johnston, one of the owners and managers of the evacuated building, said he has been trying to flag the problematic building to the city for years.

He was hoping the building would be demolished within a week of the wall crumbling, but now it’s unclear when it will happen.

‘You got to run’

Johnston said he and his neighbours had issues with the bricks of their buildings and had them re-bricked – except for 5992 Parc Avenue. The building was soon sold to Habitat 237 Grand Ile Senc., run by Daniel Lalonde.

Johnston said he believed the building would be turned into a condo, but that never happened. Instead, the building has been empty and deteriorating, leading him to worry for his tenants’ safety.

“The tenants knew that they had to be very careful.” He told them, “If you hear something, you got to run.”

The borough said Lalonde applied for a demolition permit in 2023 but interrupted the process shortly after when the city asked for additional documents.

CTV News repeatedly reached out to the owner, who did not respond to requests for comment.

In March 2024, the Montreal Fire Department inspected the building and deemed it structurally unsafe. According to the inspection report, of which CTV News obtained a copy, the building needed to be demolished “as soon as possible.”

The building was then emptied and fenced off, and the fire department passed the file on to the borough, which issued a demolition order – an exceptional measure allowing the city to bypass the demolition committee’s analysis and authorize rapid action.

The borough said the owner collaborated until June 2024 when he stopped responding entirely. In the meantime, the borough said it kept the building fenced off.

But Johnston said the situation is unacceptable and endangered his tenants. He said he’s been trying to contact all authorities, who keep passing the ball back and forth.

“We have tenants calling every single day with nowhere to go, all we could do is brief them on what’s happening, which is nothing,” he said.

“Does somebody need to die by getting hit in the head with a brick for anything to happen at the city level?”

The borough assures it “deployed considerable efforts” to secure the building.

“Everyone involved agrees on the need to demolish the building, and the borough has put mechanisms in place to facilitate the owner’s efforts,” it said in a statement.

However, the owner has not responded to communications initiated by the borough.

Tenants say it’s a larger issue

Graduate student Cole Johnson said he and his neighbours are still trying to piece together everything that happened.

“If I had stayed at work 15 minutes later, or if the bus had been delayed, or some other event delayed my return, I could have been under that wall when it collapsed,” he said.

“And that’s really the most terrifying thing to think about for me is the what ifs, you know, it’s not just for myself, but for my other roommates.”

For the time being, he is staying in a friend’s spare room.

He and Germani said this isn’t an isolated incident and want to see the city crack down on neglectful building owners.

“Some property owners are leaving their buildings abandoned, letting them become derelict because it’s easier than going through the process and costs of getting demolition permits,” said Germani.

“But the consequence is that there are homes that are not available to people, it’s exacerbating the housing crisis, and these buildings could fall down and cause deaths.”

In the meantime, the tenants have banded together, sharing information in a group chat, and can’t wait to get the green light to back home.

With files from CTV News Montreal’s Denise Roberts