By Ruby Pratka

Local Journalism Initiative

Advocates for tenants’ and seniors’ rights are warning seniors who rent “not to sign anything” if they are proposed a new short-term lease out of the blue.

Earlier this spring, the Coalition Avenir Québec (CAQ) government put in place a three-year moratorium on several common types of evictions; on May 22, a temporary ban on evictions with the stated goal of subdividing, enlarging or changing the usage of a unit took effect. However, as Sophie Dulude, director general of the renters’ rights group ACEF Montérégie-Ouest, explained, some landlords get around these restrictions by pressuring renters into breaking their leases of their own free will.

On June 12, dozens of tenants and their supporters protested in front of a complex on Boul. Fortin in Granby recently acquired by Laval-based company Immeubles Galleon, accusing the company of doing just that.

“The first indications we had were back in March, when a few people signed agreements breaking their leases and saying they had to leave for September,” Dulude said. “People would show up without warning around dinnertime or in the evening and try to get [renters] to sign agreements breaking their lease. There is a moratorium on evictions, but this is not an eviction, it’s a termination of the lease.”

“These are older folks with limited revenue, and some of them are more vulnerable,” said Madeleine Lepage, president of the Association québécoise pour les droits des retraités, which organized the June 12 protest. “About 25 of them broke their leases after 20 years or more. They were living in good, cheap, clean apartments – the kind of thing we would like to protect from speculators trying to enrich themselves on our backs.”

The renters who have terminated their leases are left in a difficult situation, with similarly priced units almost impossible to find, Dulude said.

Multiple sources have claimed that Immeubles Galleon is linked to Montreal-based speculator Henry Zavriyev, who made headlines in 2021 for trying and failing to turn the Mont-Carmel private seniors’ residence in Montreal into apartments, and that company representatives who went door-to-door at Mont-Carmel to persuade residents to break their leases had also been going door-to-door on Boul. Fortin. The BCN could not officially confirm this. Zavriyev rarely gives interviews; an email to the company he founded was redirected to Laval-based real estate agent Terry Geramainis, who did not respond to follow-up inquiries by press time.  

“Don’t sign anything”

Québec Solidaire housing critic Andrés Fontecilla has three words of advice for anyone faced with a person at their door trying to get them to sign a lease termination agreement. “Don’t sign anything.”

“As long as you haven’t broken your lease, you can stay where you are,” he said. “Contact your housing committee and make sure you have all the facts.”

Once a renter has signed the termination agreement, Dulude said, “there’s not much they can do” although they can try to go before the province’s housing tribunal and plead that they did not give informed consent before signing the termination agreement.

Although they agreed that the moratorium on classic renovictions was a step in the right direction, Dulude, Lepage and Fontecilla called on different levels of government to do more to discourage real estate speculation. “Housing is a right in Canada, not a piece of merchandise – you shouldn’t be able to kick people out of where they’re living to raise rents,” Dulude said.