With Canada Day and Moving Day fast approaching, many people are getting ready to move into a new home. However, many of them will be forced to integrate an apartment with strangers, not having the means to do otherwise.
The meteoric rise in rents has meant that the convocation of degrees no longer spells the end of the “Quebec hostel”. More and more Quebec workers are sharing the same accommodation simply to be able to afford a roof over their heads. What is not known, however, is that cohabitation comes with a legally uncertain and precarious status.
Admittedly, the Spanish hotel and Friends of this world promise us adventures and discoveries in shared accommodation. However, it can also give rise to conflicts and disputes. Given the proximity of other occupants, bickering can quickly escalate and lead to serious mental health issues, invasion of privacy and even criminality.
Lawyer and lecturer in housing law at the University of Quebec in Montreal, I have great difficulty in popularizing cohabitation to my students. Why ?
First, the law pays very little attention to it. For example, don’t waste your time looking for the term “roommate” in the Civil Code of Quebec. He is not there! The silence of the legislator on several questions raised by this subject unnecessarily complicates the conflicts between the citizens concerned.
The courts must themselves come to terms with a reality in search of a definition and call upon various techniques of interpretation to settle disputes. Depending on the circumstances, they will qualify the occupants of the same dwelling as tenants, sub-tenants, joint tenants, lodgers and borrowers. Despite my best pedagogical efforts, my students lose their Latin!
That lawyers multiply terms is not surprising. On the other hand, what should concern us all is that the current state of the law leaves a great deal of uncertainty as to the rights and obligations of the individuals involved. Who can be forced out of the home? Who can stay? Under what circumstances (lease renewal, rent, etc.)?
At the end of the final lesson of the session, my brilliant students were still asking me how to qualify their particular situation legally. They were left confused at the end of a 45 hour university course! What then of Mr. and Mrs. Everybody who have neither the privilege nor the interest to study law?
In the long term, we must all work hard to ensure that people in cohabitation can become tenants of their own accommodation, if they so desire. While waiting for the realization of this ideal, we must call for a bill to clarify their legal situation. Until then, confusion will continue to reign. And everyone can claim to be in the right! Because of this confusion, conflicts are always likely to escalate.
Regardless of its colours, the next government must once and for all include clear guidelines for cohabitation within the Civil Code of Québec. Social peace between more or less wealthy people living under the same roof depends on it.