Montreal, February 21, 2023 --- The Association des Propriétaires du Québec (APQ) has taken note of Bill 198, An Act to amend the Civil Code in order to provide greater protection to senior tenants against repossession of their housing or evictions, tabled by Christine Labrie, MNA for Sherbrooke under the banner of Québec Solidaire.
This bill, which seeks, according to Québec Solidaire, to better protect seniors:
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- lowers the minimum age for this protection to 65 years old;
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- revises downwards the number of years of occupancy of the tenant to 5 years;
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- increases the maximum income to benefit from this protection.
“This bill is a copy of Bill 993 tabled in May 2022. In 2022, these requests were unfounded when one knows all the measures put in place to protect older tenants,” says Martin Messier, President of the APQ.
Moreover, seniors have already been taken into account when Bill 492 came into force on June 10, 2016.
Since 2016, repossession of a housing is prohibited for tenants aged 70 and over, under certain conditions.
“Basically, the repossession of a housing is a very supervised process with clear rules and consequent penalties. All this will only harm real-estate investment in Québec by giving a quasi-lifetime right to tenants,” adds the APQ.
Before wanting to change a phenomenon that affects few tenants who are already protected, it would be appropriate to list the changes that affect private rental law and that require a real change.
| Year |
2018-2019 |
2019-2020 |
2020-2021 |
2021-2022 |
|
Repossession of housing |
1 061 |
1 484 |
1970 |
2540 |
A last reminder which Québec Solidaire forgets: In a context of housing repossession, tenants have the big end of the stick because they can decide to stay even if the owner justifies the reason for the recovery. The tenants decide to stay and it is up to the landlord to fight before the Administrative Housing Tribunal to assert their rights and in the majority of cases, pay them a relocation indemnity.