My partner was following her dream of moving to montreal to go to Concordia for art therapy. She found what seemed to be an affordable  dream apartment and was even able to purchase furniture from the previous tenant and have a space dedicated to making her art and heal from her last terrible apartment story only a year before(bad faith eviction from her home of 13 years)! Seemed too good to be true, well it was. She moved in and the first day we saw a cockroach, then the second day we found a bed bug!!! The landlord assured her this would be taken care of and said it has been many years since he has this issue. she believed him and moved the rest of her stuff into the apartment. The months unfolded and the bugs didn't stop and for the next four months my partner struggled emotionally and physically, slowly throwing out all the furniture we spent 800 dollars purchasing. She keeps getting bitten by the bed bugs and her reaction to the bites is horrible and painful. In November she came back to Ontario to attempt to focus on her studies for a few weeks after she was able to get a drive from Montreal from a good friend of hers. The landlord saw her leaving the apartment on Nov. 16th and commented "are you moving out" she said 'no" I am just going away for a few weeks to get away from the bugs. Then after much contemplation, she then emailed him Dec. 2 to state she was unhappy in the apartment due to the bugs and was unable to stay there, she stated that she would like to break her lease (he mentioned many times this was not a issue if she wanted to leave) and simply asked him for a break in December's rent due to the unsanitary conditions caused by the bugs and the hundreds of dollars she wasted on items she has to throw out and the purchases she has to make to attempt to preserve her own items and kill the bugs herself. He responded with "you have to pay rent" and that was that. (We discovered the timeline of events later). He then took it upon himself four days later to illegally change the locks and remove all her belongings by throwing everything she owned into garbage bags. The guys the landlord hired to riffle through her personal belongings, didn't even think to use her clothing to pack fragile things safely. Everything, from wine glasses to ceramics, fragile art objects thrown together into garbage bags with power tools and cleaning supplies and piled on top of eachother in a pile under heavy furniture that looked like it was literally thrown on top of the pile in the filthy basement of the apartment building and in equally filthy his office without any notice, warning or communications, and moved another person into her apartment while she was away. So many things are broken and scratched and missing. its overwhelming and it was really traumatizing for her to relive the victimization of yet another terrible and inhumane landlord within less than 2 years. Some of her most cherished plants are dead and plants and family heirlooms missing. she had to miss her final exams to rush back to montreal to save all her belongings. when she moved there she brought all of her life's belongings because she thought she had found a place to call home. In Quebec this is a "civil matter" that means that the police could not help with anything. I have never made a go fund me for anything but this is beyond our means. I am asking on her behalf if anyone can toss a few bucks our way for all the moving costs, the storage unit because we need to process everything due to the bugs, the freezer we have to purchase to try and freeze the bugs, the hundreds of dollars in laundry and lastly the cost of getting a lawyer to get the legal ball rolling to take him to court because we never want him to do this to anyone ever again. The day before she went to get her stuff from his "storage" area, we found out that there were tenants being forcibly removed from their homes in the same building. We spoke to a few of them and it is clear that this landlord is corrupt, has don't this before and WILL do it again. He is a con-artist and manipulates his tenants to believe lies about other tenants. He needs to be stopped. But for now HollyJo just needs to get through the next few months. Anything helps.