A week ago, a Montreal landlord was ordered by the Quebec rental board to pay $50,000 in damages to an artist who found herself homeless for several months after being evicted “in bad faith,” the latest effort by the tribunal to deter investors from taking advantage of the housing crisis to evict tenants and jack up rents.
“Sending a notice of eviction and then changing one’s mind is too easy for the landlord, who in so doing disturbs the social order of an exemplary regime,” said adjudicator Sophie Alain in Ainsworth c. IF Realties, 2024 QCTAL 14947. “They must be dissuaded from doing so again.”