Political occupation of vacant Montreal apartment building ended by police eviction
Organizers hope to bring attention to 100,000 vacant homes across Quebec
Around 20 housing advocates and activists occupied a vacant apartment building in Montreal’s Le Sud-Ouest borough on the evening of Sept. 28.
The organizers believe their occupation is the first political squat of a vacant building in Montreal in 25 years, since the 2001 occupation of an abandoned mansion in protest of a lack of affordable housing.
Lyn Lee, a housing advocate with the Citizen Action Committee of Verdun (CACV), says organizers occupied the building to draw attention to nearly 100,000 vacant homes across Quebec, about 25,000 of which are on the island of Montreal.
Malika Fortin, an activist who participated in the occupation, pointed to the 12,077 visibly unhoused people in Quebec (according to a 2025 government report) and the number of families struggling to find housing despite numerous homes remaining vacant across the province.
“Occupying a building was just the logical next step since our protests and demands aren’t being heard,” Fortin explained.
Lee said provincial politicians have ignored pleas from community organizations and housing activists to address the housing crisis.
“With the election coming up, housing is barely a conversation for these people,” Lee explained. “We wanted to bring it into the spotlight.”
Lee criticized politicians for focusing on building more homes and treating housing as a supply-and-demand issue when vacant units are abundant.
She instead called on politicians to take measures to make housing affordable.
“The answer is actually investing massively in social housing, preserving affordable existing units [through methods such as] rent control,” Lee added. “Treat housing like a human right.”
According to a report by the Communauté métropolitaine de Montréal, most vacant rental units on the island have higher asking rents. Only 1.2 per cent of affordable units are vacant, compared to 4.4 per cent of the upper bracket of rentals.
Fortin said the local community came together to support the occupation and show solidarity.
“Every day, we saw dozens and dozens of people coming by to bring us food and supplies or just show support from the courtyard,” Fortin said. “It was a real community moment [and] we built some incredibly rich social connections.”
Lee said many people came to attend nightly film projections in the parking lot.
Alvaro Pedicelli, a co-owner of the building, told The Montreal Gazette that he had asked the city for a demolition permit for the building—which last had tenants in 2022.
“The building is not livable inside. It's got structural problems,” Pedicelli said.
Organizers of the occupation—who conducted a thorough cleanup of the building and purchased a fire extinguisher and smoke alarms—painted a different picture.
“A lot of the rooms in that apartment building had floors that were nicer than a lot of apartments I’ve been in,” said Lee. “A family could have lived there, someone could have lived there, but it’s just empty and left to rot because maybe it’s more profitable for investors to just leave buildings empty.”
Le 24 heures reported that Pedicelli owns about 60 homes in the area.
The occupants were removed from the building by police around 2:20 p.m. on Oct. 1, nearly three days after the occupation began.
Constable Florence Stafford, a spokesperson for the Montreal police, told The Link that police received a request that morning to remove the occupants from the premises. Stafford was unable to share who made the request.
“No arrest has been made and no charge has been [laid] so far,” added Stafford.
Fortin said the eviction was unexpected, as Pedicelli told Le 24 heures that he did not intend to file an eviction request prior to the provincial election on Oct. 5.
The police and fire department previously told The Montreal Gazette they did not plan to remove the occupants.
Fortin confirmed that the removal was “calm,” with no arrests made, but alleged that the police made misogynistic comments and sexually harassed the activists inside.
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