Last of the cheap leases

>> Owners take legal aim at unprofitable
practice of subletting

by KRISTIAN GRAVENOR

Photo by Jason Felker

As rents rise and vacancies fall in the Montreal apartment universe, one of the last reliable methods available to perpetuate inexpensive digs is to transfer a bargain lease on from one tenant to another. But landlords don’t like the process because it costs a chance to choose their own candidate and, in passing, raise the rent. Now they’re going to court to challenge the rules.

The Property Owners League, together with landlord Denis Carignan, are going after former tenant Daniel Dubreuil for transferring his five and a half at 7574 Christophe-Colomb over to single mother Nathalie Gadbois two years ago. Dubreuil, a customer service rep at Videotron, has gone on to become a homeowner but isn’t backing down from the role of saviour of cheap apartments like the $407.87 apartment he handed on.
“It’s bizarre because the owners say we don’t have the right to impose a tenant on them,” says Dubreuil. “They say that in a capitalist society they should have the right to choose whoever they want. But if they do a credit check and find the new tenant isn’t a good candidate they can refuse him.”

Under current rules written in 1994, tenants have the right to assign a current lease to a replacement of their choice. Landlords can ask the outgoing tenant for the name, phone number and employer of the proposed replacement and have 15 days to research the candidate. A landlord can refuse the proposed tenant but without solid justification the refusal will be overturned at the Rental Board.

After a Rental Board judge overturned Carignan’s attempt to reject his new tenant, Carignan complained to the Property Owners League, which has chosen the example as a test case against lease assignment.

“How is it that a tenant has the right to choose the new tenant over the will of the landlord?” says Pierre Aubry of the Owners League. “A landlord should have the right to look after his own things. People have the right to sell their car the way they want but imagine if somebody else had the right to sell your car? That’s what’s happening now.”

Aubry argues that current conditions will lead to a black market for low-cost leases in which outgoing tenants will sell their leases to replacement tenants.

Tenants’ groups see things differently. “When the vacancy rate is high, the owners tell the tenants to find somebody else to fill the apartment. Now that there are no empty apartments, the landlords want to do it themselves,” says Denis Cusson of the Regroupment des comités de logements et associations des locataires du Québec, a group which will testify for Dubreuil in Appeals Court on March 13. “We deplore that they’re challenging a right that’s in the Civil Code. It’s clear that if they remove the right to transfer a lease, they’re taking a big part of the tenant’s power away.” Cusson notes that the largest rent hikes occur when a new lease is signed with a tenant of the landlord’s choice. “The transferral of leases makes landlords unhappy because it forces them to supply a valid reason to refuse a potential tenant. They can’t refuse a tenant based on whether or not they like his face.” :