Chronicle for seniors
PSR evictions: worrying legal uncertainty
Published on August 13, 2025 by Jocelyne Raymond. Journal de Chambly.
On June 6, 2024, the Act to Limit the Right of Landlords to Evict Tenants and Strengthen the Protection of Senior Tenants came into force.
Since that date, it has been forbidden for a landlord to evict a tenant in order to subdivide a dwelling, substantially enlarge it or change its use, for a period of three years. This type of decree, which withdraws the exercise of certain rights for a given period, is known as a “moratorium”, a term most often used in the mainstream media.
As soon as the moratorium came into force, a rather broad official interpretation concluded that private seniors’ residences (PSRs) were totally exempt from the eviction ban. In a more affirmative form, it was therefore still permissible for owners of these residences to carry out evictions, in compliance with the provisions of the Civil Code of Quebec[1].
The CAAP noted, however, that this interpretation needed to be qualified after a complaint submitted to it by an PSR resident led it to read the provisions governing these residences more carefully.
In fact, the regulations allow PSR owners to carry out one or more evictions, but only under certain limited conditions:
the eviction is intended to change the use of the residence, for example, to cease offering “personal services, while offering regular residential rental services”; and the cessation of the residence’s activities, or part of them if the eviction concerns that part, has been authorized in accordance with the law.
We therefore wondered about the case of our resident, a very elderly lady, who was evicted urgently from her home, without having received the notice required by law and without the compensation provided for therein, even though no cessation of services had been planned by the residence concerned, nor authorized by the authorities. We question the appropriateness of this eviction. The person we are accompanying is awaiting a decision on the matter from the Tribunal administratif du logement (TAL).
Unfortunately, since delays for non-urgent cases can stretch over several months, we feel it would be more appropriate to obtain a more precise interpretation of these provisions of the law from the TAL, or for amendments to be made to them, so that this legal vagueness doesn’t open the door to errors, or sometimes, abuses of power on the part of certain homeowners.
[1] However, this information has generally disappeared from official websites by this date.
Since that date, it has been forbidden for a landlord to evict a tenant in order to subdivide a dwelling, substantially enlarge it or change its use, for a period of three years.
