OMHM staff powerless too?

By Tracey Arial, October 3rd, 2012

Sixty-six seniors think that their building at 720 Gamelin is filthy, but one person disagrees, so nothing will be done.
 “On Sept. 12, 2012, one of our employees verified and the premises were clean,” says the written response to a tenant petition. The French letter is dated Sept. 13 and is signed by Hosée Jeudi, who’s in charge of the Southwest Sector for the Office municipal d’habitation de Montreal.
 Except the premises weren’t and still aren’t clean, says Miranda Mallet, who collected signatures for the petition at the request of Jeudi himself.
 “I haven’t seen any ants since they sprayed RAID in my apartment, but that doesn’t help the rest of the building,” said Mallett. “Why are they asking me to collect signatures from other people if they don’t intend to do anything about it?”
 Mallett took The Suburban on a tour of the building to point out hanging spider webs, dead ants in the corners and a smelly filthy garbage collection area, some of which has since been cleaned by the janitor and by tenants themselves. She also talked about opening her coffee machine and a container of Fig Newtons and seeing a swarming mass of ants.
 She hasn’t seen any ants in her apartment since an OMHM employee sprayed RAID along her cupboard in mid-September, but other tenants remain infested.
 “Mr Scali, who is in charge of the maintenance and repairs for your building, informs me that he contacted you on September 12, 2012 and that you mentioned that you don’t have ants. If you do have ants or other vermin, call our call centre at 514-872-6646. They’ll transmit your claim to the cleanliness department. Please inform the other signatories to your petition what we’ve done.”
 Some of those who signed the petition were at the meeting with The Suburban last Monday. “We’ve been calling that line and no one does anything,” they said.
 Few of the tenants knew that the OMHM complaints’ office, which is open from Monday to Thursday , between 8:30 and noon, is distinct from the regular repair and maintenance office that they usually call.
 They also didn’t know that after 20 days of following the official complaint process, they can ask for an intervention by the Ombudswoman of Montreal. Several of the tenants will try those official procedures and see if they can get a better response than they’ve had so far.
 In the meantime, some of the oldtimers brag about how the building used to be, when it was run by LaSalle, then a separate city from Montreal.
“You could eat off the floor in the hallway, it was so clean,” said one. “They inspected all the apartments annually too. We had seven people in the offices here. How do they expect to take care of the place when one janitor has four buildings to take care of, and another person comes in for half a day every week?”