Québec Solidaire believes it is time to tighten the law which, since 2016, has protected senior tenants from evictions and repossessions. The party proposes in particular to increase from 70 to 65 the minimum age required to ensure the maintenance in places of the elderly.
In 2016, the former spokesperson for QS, Françoise David, succeeded in rallying all parties in the National Assembly around her bill which amended the Civil Code and now prohibited a landlord from evicting a tenant. low-income earner aged 70 and over and who has lived in their home for more than ten years.
Since then, the housing crisis has worsened throughout Quebec. The supportive deputy for Laurier-Dorion, Andrés Fontecilla, now wants the criteria governing housing repossessions in the Civil Code to be tightened to protect more seniors. Bill 993, which he presented, therefore proposes to raise the minimum age to benefit from this protection from 70 to 65, to reduce the number of years of occupation of the tenant from 10 to 5 years and to increase the maximum income requirement.
“We are currently facing a real epidemic of evictions of senior tenants in Quebec,” said QS spokesperson Gabriel Nadeau-Dubois, who was accompanied at a press conference on Wednesday by Andrés Fontecilla and the former united deputy Françoise David. “Not a week goes by that we don’t read stories in the newspapers about seniors being evicted, being thrown out into the street. It’s terrible in 2022. We can’t accept that. »
Anguish and distress
The elected officials presented their bill to journalists in front of the private residence for seniors (RPA) Mont-Carmel, located in downtown Montreal, where tenants have been fighting for months to keep their housing. Remember that last January, the approximately 200 residents of Mont-Carmel received an eviction notice from the new owner of the building who wishes to convert it into a rental complex without the basic services offered in RPA.
Constance Vaudrin, 83, is one of the residents of Mont-Carmel. The current law does not protect her from evictions because she has not lived in the building for at least 10 years. However, the changes to the law proposed by QS would allow it to be better protected. To be evicted from your accommodation is “horrible”, she recalled. “The anguish and distress of older people who are evicted makes us unable to think about what we are going to do in the future and how we are going to get out of this. »
Residents of Mont-Carmel have, however, begun to fight to keep their apartment and maintain the services provided in RPA. The bill proposed by QS is good, but we must go further, believes Constance Vaudrin. “Once this law is passed, what we want most is to prohibit the change of vocation of an RPA that is sold. Because even if we are not ousted, we will no longer have the necessary services. »
Consensus sought
QS believes time is running out and the party wants the bill to be debated before the end of the parliamentary session in June. “We can get this bill passed very quickly,” says Gabriel Nadeau-Dubois. “We are not talking about a 200-article bill. We are talking about just a few articles that broaden the consensus that Françoise David had built in 2016. “
In the office of the Minister of Municipal Affairs and Housing, Andrée Laforest, it is argued that the tabling of a new bill to better protect seniors and the stock of social and affordable housing is already planned.
For its part, the Regrouping of housing committees and tenant associations of Quebec (RCLALQ) welcomes the QS bill, but its spokesperson Marjolaine Deneault nevertheless has certain reservations. A tougher law could lead to more discrimination for seniors, she says. “The problem on the ground — we saw it with the 2016 changes — is that landlords may be more reluctant to rent accommodation to people aged 70 and over for fear of not being able to afford it” get rid of,” explains Ms. Deneault.
The RCLALQ judges that because of the current housing crisis, Quebec should prohibit evictions and impose a moratorium on housing repossessions.