A woman from Montérégie, homeless, finds herself sleeping in her car a few days before July 1. She also doubts the good faith of her former landlord who put the apartment she occupied back on the market for almost double the price.
Met by TVA Nouvelles Thursday afternoon in Salaberry-de-Valleyfield, Julie Vadboncoeur says she sleeps alternately in her car and in a trailer lent by a friend. She has now been in this precarious situation for around twenty days.
She admits that she never thought she would live in this situation. “Never in 100 years,” she says in an interview.
To avoid dramatizing the event, Mrs. Vadeboncoeur prefers to make jokes about the situation.
“That’s my bathroom,” she joked, pointing to part of her car.
At the beginning of the year, Ms. Vadboncoeur, who lived in an apartment on Rue Grande-Île and who claims to have always paid her rent, received bad news. Her landlord Elliot Daigneault explained to her that she would have to leave the premises because he wanted to give the apartment to his mother.
Ms. Vadboncoeur has been homeless since the end of May, following an agreement to terminate her lease. However, recently and to her great surprise, she noticed through a classified ad that the apartment she was occupying was back on the market for rental and that the rent had gone from about $750 to $1,300. We checked on Thursday and the owner’s mother still does not live there.
“I was surprised, but not surprised,” said Julie Vadboncoeur.
“I find that really lame,” she adds.
The owner even threw some of Mrs. Vadboncoeur’s belongings out into the street, which she did not have time to collect before she left. Her neighbor rushed to collect everything he could before the garbage collectors came.
Ms. Vadboncoeur could take legal action against the owner Elliot Daigneault who sent us a reaction by email. He affirms that he did not act in bad faith in this matter given the existence of an agreement on the termination of the lease which, according to him, takes precedence over any other negotiation.
The woman explains that she wants to take legal action against her former landlord.
