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Archived Articles
Simeon Mitropolitski is a Canadian analyst, of Bulgarian origin, and a former syndicated columnist with the Bulgarian News Agency (BTA). He is the author of several hundred articles dealing with hot political and economic topics, both national and international.
He was part of the first group of Bulgarian intellectuals and students that began the opposition movement that finally put an end to the communist regime in this country in 1989, and in 1996-1997 participated in international observation teams during the elections in several Balkan countries - Romania, Albania and Bulgaria.
In 2002 Simeon and his family moved from Bulgaria to Canada where they live now in Montreal, province of Quebec. Simeon is a Master of Political Science from McGill University and a B.A. of Political Science and History.
Global Real Estate Project
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Canada: Apocalypse in Montreal postponed until 2003Thousands of people thrown on the street, widespread looting of personal belongings, blocked and ineffective municipal agencies, social tensions rising and finally suicides, that was the way some Montreal media depicted the D-Day - July 1, 2002. That day, since the early 70s, many people in the French-speaking Canadian province of Quebec have been accustomed to change their leases. This year the lack of sufficient housing facilities was expected to produce the worst social cataclysm the city has experienced in decades. The results now, some days after the D-Day, are obvious, that day there was no apocalypse and huge social tensions aren't expected ahead. Municipal agencies did their duty - housing temporarily tens (not thousands) of families that didn't find new leases on time. Why such disparity between expectation and reality? There are at least two different means for finding the answer. The first is to analyze why predictions were so dark, the second - to explain how the city was able to find a solution to the problem at the early stage. First a little background. Montreal unlike some other Canadian cities has regulated rents. The landlords can't at their own will increase the rents. But in fact they could do that if the market is so tight the tenants accept such increases instead of risking being thrown on the street. So we have very strong financial motivation for running the rumors that the situation is so bad in the real estate market that people should expect the worst scenario. Having such motivation, it's only a matter of good will and strong relationships to make its way to the public via the electronic and printed media. Last year the housing crisis in Montreal was so huge and so unexpected by both tenants and municipal authorities that any black prediction about the current D-Day seemed to attract the public attention. On one hand, when a lie is repeated a hundred times it really becomes indistinguishable from the truth. On the other hand, the scare such rumors produced was so huge among the hundreds of thousands of tenants in the province that its effects were quite the opposite*. Many people simply refused to change their housing thus reducing the importance of July 1st in Montreal. Preparing for the worst scenario the city of Montreal was ready to house thousands of families at the motels, even at schools now empty because of summer vacation. During the D-Day the local dignitaries several times held press-conferences to explain the real situation. Many non-government organizations have dispatched volunteers to help people without a roof. In other words, everything was made to cope with the situation that finally wasn't so bad as it was predicted. July 1st is already behind us but the problems on the rental market in Montreal stand unresolved. Less discrimination, more transparency, more market oriented reform, that's what this market needs most. Or we should expect a real crisis, maybe next year? Who knows?
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