Welfare recipient fights hotel’s policy

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This article was published 27/01/2011 (5547 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

When he was evicted for not allowing his landlord to open his mail, Rick Melanson spent four nights living under the Redwood Bridge.

Now he’s filed a complaint with the Manitoba Human Rights Commission against the Garrick Hotel.

“I didn’t think it was right,” said the tall, soft-spoken Melanson, who’s on social assistance due to his battle with anxiety and depression.

According to the Manitoba’s Human Rights Code, discrimination against someone based on their source of income is illegal. A notice posted in the Garrick hallway singled out “all welfare tenants,” telling them they had to sign a waiver giving the hotel permission to open their mail from the social assistance office and hold any cheques payable to the tenants.

Melanson was a tenant from May 17 to July 1 at the downtown hotel, which rents rooms by the month. His $300 monthly rent was paid directly by social assistance to the hotel. In June, hotel manager Don Pownall told him he had to sign the waiver, Melanson’s complaint said. Melanson said that was unreasonable because his rent was already paid directly to the Garrick by social assistance.

Any cheques he received would be his allowance for food and other living expenses, Melanson said, and refused to sign the waiver. He was told he’d be evicted at the end of the month if he didn’t sign it.

“I was shocked at first,” said Melanson, who is represented by Legal Aid Manitoba’s Public Interest Law Centre. “I didn’t really know what to do.” On July 1, he was told to hand over his room keys and leave.

With the manager and the bartender standing between him and the jacket and change of clothes he had in his third-floor room, he left quietly.

“I didn’t want any hassles,” he said. He tried contacting his social assistance caseworker for help and learned he was on holidays.

Melanson, who moved into the Garrick Hotel when he and his partner of nearly a decade split up, had no family in Winnipeg or place to stay. He lived on the street and slept under the Redwood Bridge.

“It was very depressing and very stressful,” said Melanson who, at 42, found himself homeless. “It was all right out, except at night it got pretty cold.”

Four days later, his caseworker returned from holidays and helped him find a place to stay.

They filed a complaint with the provincial residential tenancies branch for wrongful eviction and were awarded damages for his out-of-pocket expenses. Melanson’s caseworker found him temporary lodging at the Quest Inn and the Garrick Hotel was ordered to foot the bill.

Today, he’s living in a home in the North End and getting the help he needs to deal with his depression and anxiety. His goal is to get better so he can find a job, then work on his literacy skills. He left school in Edmonton in Grade 10 without being able to read or write.

Now that things are improving for him, he wants to help the people still under pressure to sign over their rights and their welfare cheques, he said.

His human rights complaint asks the commission to order the hotel to stop asking welfare recipients to sign waivers giving the hotel permission to open their mail from the social assistance office under threat of eviction.

“It’s to stop it from happening to other people,” Melanson said.

That’s why the Public Interest Law Centre is backing his complaint, said his lawyer, Mira Novek.

“It’s going to affect a large number of people…There are many tenants on social assistance at the Garrick Hotel who signed waivers under the threat of eviction,” Novek said.

“From our perspective, it’s going to help all of them and send a strong message to landlords across the city.”

The Garrick Hotel did not respond to a request for comment.

carol.sanders@freepress.mb.ca