![\"man\"](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/04\/1776879849_783_default.jpg\")
Ameen Raa Al-Khabyyr, limited by mobility issues, has been battling bed bugs in his NDG apartment for years. (Paula Dayan-Perez\/CBC)<\/p>\nAmeen Raa Al-Khabyyr has spent years fighting a losing battle against bed bugs in his subsidized Montreal apartment.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cI was using this powder from Canadian Tire and it\u2019s good for three months,\u201d said Al-Khabyyr, who is in his 70s and struggles with mobility issues.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cI did it myself, but only where the floor meets the walls.\u201d<\/p>\n
He\u2019s a longtime tenant of a 44-unit building in the C\u00f4te-des-Neiges\u2013Notre-Dame-de-Gr\u00e2ce borough which offers affordable housing. It\u2019s on Grand Boulevard in NDG, north of Saint-Jacques Street.<\/p>\n
Along with bed bugs, there are also rodent and cockroach infestations.<\/p>\n
Julie Cormier is the assistant director of the NDG Community Council\u200b\u200b\u200b\u200b\u200b\u200b\u200b\u200b, a non-profit organization that has been working to fix the problem since January after the previous building managers quit. She said her non-profit group inspected the building, finding electrical issues and major infestations.\u00a0<\/p>\n
In emails viewed by CBC News, the local CLSC, which provides frontline services, notified the NDG Community Council that it has had to suspend some services, like cleaning, in the building. <\/p>\n
The CLSC said its contractors didn\u2019t have the experience or gear necessary to protect themselves from bed bugs. <\/p>\n
Insect and rodent droppings<\/p>\n
On Al-Khabyyr\u2019s floor, in a vacant unit, bed bugs have wreaked havoc. The mattress of a former resident is blackened by bed bug droppings. Cormier even pointed out bloodstains left by previous residents who were bitten by the insects.<\/p>\n
Ameen Raa Al-Khabyyr, limited by mobility issues, has been battling bed bugs in his NDG apartment for years. (Paula Dayan-Perez\/CBC)<\/p>\n
Besides those looking for subsidized housing, Cormier said several residents live with mental illness and the building serves as a means to get off the streets.\u00a0<\/p>\n
The NDG Community Council says it recently committed $35,000 to fumigate, but the non-profit needs help because, Cormier explained, \u201cit\u2019s not in our budget. It\u2019s not in our mandate.\u201d<\/p>\n
A large generator was installed behind the building to carry out heat treatments for the bed bugs. \u00c9co-Extermination president Peter Kabala has been working on site. He said it\u2019s a major case.<\/p>\n
\u201cCases this serious, we see maybe once a year. Two at most,” he said.<\/p>\n
Once the extermination is complete, Cormier said her organization wants to ensure all 44 units stay livable and residents don\u2019t end up back on the street.<\/p>\n
“Right now, we need help from the health-care system. Because the residents are people who face many challenges \u2014 physical health, but also mental health,” said Cormier, noting eight of the units are empty because of the bad conditions.<\/p>\n
System ‘doesn’t work’<\/p>\n
It\u2019s a different non-profit organization that owns the building \u2014 Logements Communautaires et Solidaires Grand (LCSG). The LCSG and the previous manager \u2014 Soci\u00e9t\u00e9 de Gestion Querbes \u2014 both deny blame for the current state of the building.\u00a0<\/p>\n
The two ended their collaboration and have different views on what went wrong.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n
The building is governed by a volunteer board facing a \u201cfull-time\u201d workload, often taking on responsibilities related to health and social care, said Gulnar Mousak, the head of the LCSG board of directors, who argued the system \u201cdoesn\u2019t work.\u201d <\/p>\n
She said that while the board is listed as the owner, they are effectively \u201ctied\u201d by the regulations of the Soci\u00e9t\u00e9 d\u2019habitation du Qu\u00e9bec (SHQ), the provincial agency that oversees affordable housing.<\/p>\n
Mousak said the board took proactive steps to manage bed bugs as far back as 2022, including signing monthly checks for extermination services, but did not anticipate the scale of the recent infestation and was unaware of rodent issues until recently.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe expectations are way beyond our capacity,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n
WATCH | Bed bugs, mice in an NDG affordable housing building:![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/04\/1776879849_317_default.jpg\")
<\/p>\n
Bed bug, mice infestations at Montreal affordable housing spur urgent call for help<\/p>\n
A community organization in Montreal\u2019s Notre-Dame-de-Gr\u00e2ce neighbourhood has stepped in to support a neglected 44-unit affordable housing building and is seeking urgent help as vulnerable residents face infestations and unsafe living conditions.Calling on health authorities to intervene<\/p>\n
Cormier said the regional health authority needs to place intervention workers in the building permanently, to provide those much-needed health and social services.<\/p>\n
\u201cThose people need support,\u201d she said. \u201cWe need the system to jump in.\u201d<\/p>\n
In a statement to CBC News, the health authority, CIUSSS du Centre-Ouest-de-l’\u00cele-de-Montr\u00e9al, said it\u2019s aware of the building\u2019s situation, and that some tenants are followed individually by its clinical teams. <\/p>\n
Care for residents can\u2019t be refused altogether, the statement says, but service requests are reoriented to ensure interventions are safe when a privately contracted worker funded by the CLSC identifies health and safety risks.<\/p>\n
\u201cOther residents may access general health and psychosocial services through the usual points of entry, such as calling 811,\u201d the statement says.<\/p>\n
In a statement, Sant\u00e9 Qu\u00e9bec says it has no direct control over the building’s management or quality.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cClinical teams remain available to the building’s residents who are receiving care to ensure their well-being,\u201d the statement says, but the unsanitary conditions of community housing fall under municipal jurisdiction and the housing tribunal.\u00a0<\/p>\n
A statement from C\u00f4te-des-Neiges\u2013Notre-Dame-de-Gr\u00e2ce says the borough helped co-ordinate preparations for some of the apartments ahead of the fumigation, but it will not provide funding for the pest treatment because the LCSG is considered a private owner. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Ameen Raa Al-Khabyyr has spent years fighting a losing battle against bed bugs in his subsidized Montreal apartment.\u00a0…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":621514,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[194292],"tags":[49,48,2338],"class_list":["post-621513","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-montreal","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-montreal"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/621513","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=621513"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/621513\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/621514"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=621513"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=621513"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=621513"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}