Few pieces of legislation have changed the game for owners of rental buildings in Quebec as much as Law 65. Passed in 2024 under the official title “Act to limit the right of eviction” (chapter 23), it establishes a moratorium of roughly three years — until June 6, 2027 — during which many evictions become quite simply illegal. In concrete terms, the maneuvers that made it possible to empty a dwelling in order to enlarge it, subdivide it or change its use, and then re-rent it for much more, are put on pause. For the landlord who was counting on that shortcut, the ground has given way. This article explains, without dramatizing or inventing anything, what the law actually does, why the “renoviction” route was already legally risky even before the moratorium, what it costs when it fails, and above all which path remains open — and legal — to recover a dwelling while the law is in force.
In this article
- The facts: what Law 65 concretely changes
- Renoviction, the word that made headlines
- Why the shortcut was already a legal trap
- The consequences: damages, punitive damages, reputation
- What should have been done: the voluntary agreement
- Why work through professionals
- In short: a shortcut that costs more than it earns
The facts: what Law 65 concretely changes
Let’s start with the facts, as they appear in the text of the law. Law 65 (2024, chapter 23), enacted under the name “Act to limit the right of eviction,” puts in place a moratorium lasting roughly three years. This moratorium runs until June 6, 2027. Throughout that interval, the law makes illegal many residential evictions that rested on three very specific grounds: enlargement of the dwelling, its subdivision and change of use. These are exactly the grounds that, in practice, served as the vehicle for renovictions.
The scope of this change must be understood. Previously, a landlord could, by invoking a work project affecting the dwelling, trigger an eviction and, once the tenant had left, put the dwelling back on the market at an entirely different price. It is precisely this mechanism that the law interrupts for the duration of the moratorium. The official text, published in the Gazette officielle du Québec, sets out this temporary limitation of the right of eviction: it is the legal basis that, overnight, reshuffled the deck for a whole category of real estate projects.
A pause, not an abolition
One point deserves to be stressed because it is often misunderstood: Law 65 establishes a temporary moratorium, not a permanent prohibition. The word “moratorium” says it all: it is a suspension for a set period. At the deadline — June 6, 2027 — the legislature may decide to renew the measure, modify it or end it. Nothing is decided in advance. A landlord should therefore not build their entire strategy on the idea of an automatic “return to normal,” nor assume the measure will disappear without a trace. Prudence calls for checking the state of the law in force at the moment of acting.
What the law does not directly affect
Law 65 targets evictions for work: enlargement, subdivision, change of use. It is not to be confused with repossession of a dwelling, which falls under a distinct regime of the Civil Code and remains governed by the Administrative Housing Tribunal (TAL). Nor does it turn a defaulting tenant into an untouchable tenant: recourses for non-payment of rent or for serious disturbances remain governed by their own rules. In other words, the law targets one very specific practice — the one that consisted of instrumentalizing a work project to evict — without upending the entire edifice of rental law. This distinction is crucial to understanding what remains possible, and we will come back to it.
Key takeaway
Law 65 (2024, ch. 23) suspends, until June 6, 2027, evictions for enlargement, subdivision or change of use — the core of renovictions. It is a temporary moratorium, not an abolition, and it does not directly affect repossession of a dwelling or recourses for tenant fault.
Renoviction, the word that made headlines
If this law exists, it is because a phenomenon made it necessary in the eyes of the legislature. That phenomenon has a name that has become familiar: renoviction. The word is a blend, a contraction of “renovation” and “eviction.” It is in no way an official legal term — you will not find it as such in the Civil Code — but it describes with cruel precision a very real maneuver: evicting a tenant by invoking work whose true purpose is not to improve their dwelling for them, but to recover it in order to re-rent it for significantly more to someone else.
The mechanism is easy to understand. A dwelling occupied for a long time often carries a rent well below market, because the annual increases, which are regulated, rarely keep pace with the surge in rents at re-renting. The gap can be considerable. The temptation, for some landlords, was therefore to “free up” that dwelling on grounds of enlargement or subdivision, then pocket the difference on the new lease. Multiplied across a neighbourhood, the practice fed upward pressure on rents and left the most vulnerable tenants more exposed. It is this dynamic, widely documented in the news, that led to legislative intervention.
Why the legislature acted
Faced with the scale of the reported cases, Quebec chose a head-on response: rather than relying solely on individual recourses, which are often slow and gruelling for tenants, it suspended at the source the eviction grounds that served as the vehicle. By temporarily blocking evictions for enlargement, subdivision and change of use, Law 65 removes the tool itself. For a landlord, the message is unambiguous: during the moratorium, this route is closed, and trying to force it opens the door to serious trouble.
Why the shortcut was already a legal trap
One thing must be clearly understood: even before Law 65 was passed, the “disguised” renoviction was not safe ground. The moratorium tightened and clarified the boundary, but Quebec law already offered several safeguards against abusive eviction. In that respect, the 2024 law merely makes more visible and more sharply defined a reality that already existed: emptying a dwelling under a pretext is not a right, it is a risk. Let’s review the legal principles at play.
The right to remain in the dwelling
The first pillar is the right to remain in the dwelling (article 1936 of the Civil Code of Québec, C.c.Q. — Quebec’s core private-law statute). This principle grants the tenant a personal right to stay in their dwelling as long as they meet their obligations. It is the default rule, and eviction is only the exception, strictly circumscribed. In other words, the burden of justifying a departure falls on the landlord, never on the tenant in good standing. Law 65 reinforces this logic by removing, for the duration of the moratorium, part of the exceptions on which renovictions relied.
The prohibition on harassment
The second pillar is the prohibition on harassment (article 1902 of the Civil Code). The law prohibits the lessor — or anyone — from harassing a tenant in a way that restricts their peaceful enjoyment of the premises or that leads them to leave the dwelling. This is a point that improvising landlords underestimate: piling on pressure, visits, intimidating notices or “take it or leave it” offers with the aim of pushing someone out can, in itself, constitute harassment and ground a recourse. A poorly handled approach then turns against its author.
Bad faith and its penalties
The third pillar, the most consequential, is the bad faith regime. When an eviction or a repossession rests on a ground that is not the real ground — claiming work, or the installation of a relative, when the real objective is to re-rent for more — the Civil Code (article 1968) opens the tenant a recourse for damages and allows the court to award punitive damages. This recourse can be exercised even after the tenant has left. The math of the shortcut then collapses: the hoped-for savings on the new rent can be far exceeded by the award.
Add up these three elements — right to remain in the dwelling, prohibition on harassment, penalties for bad faith — and you get a legal environment in which disguised eviction was already, before 2027, a losing bet in the medium term. The text of Law 65 simply closes, for three years, the door that some believed was ajar. To dig deeper into the mechanics of a bad-faith repossession and what distinguishes a genuine approach from a pretext, we have written a dedicated guide.
The consequences: damages, punitive damages, reputation
What does a landlord who tries to circumvent the law actually risk? The answer comes in three parts, and none is negligible.
The financial part
First, money. A tenant evicted in bad faith can claim compensation. Damages are meant to compensate the harm suffered: moving costs, the rent gap on the new dwelling, trouble and inconvenience. To this may be added punitive damages, whose logic is not to compensate but to deter and penalize conduct deemed abusive. We put forward no precise figure here, because it depends entirely on the circumstances and the court’s assessment; but the principle is clear: the total can wipe out, and well beyond, the hoped-for gain on the rent. The shortcut that was supposed to pay off ends up costing.
The procedural and time part
Next, time and energy. A contested eviction means a file at the TAL, delays, hearings, an uncertain outcome. While the dispute unfolds, the dwelling is neither cleanly recovered nor rentable with any peace of mind. The landlord who hoped to move fast ends up bogged down — often longer than if they had chosen a negotiated route from the outset. To understand what the law qualifies as an illegal renoviction and the recourses it triggers, our dedicated analysis details the process.
The reputation part
Finally, the most insidious: reputation. Cases of abusive eviction are regularly the subject of news reports, and a landlord named in a renoviction story carries that label well after the file is closed. For a real estate investor — who has to deal with tenants, neighbours, municipalities, sometimes financial partners — a damaged reputation is a destroyed asset. Damages can be paid back; an image is not easily bought back. And on the penalty side, beyond civil damages, fines may be added depending on the breaches established.
What should have been done: the voluntary agreement
Here is the part too many landlords overlook, and it changes everything: the Law 65 moratorium does not prohibit recovering a dwelling. It prohibits doing so through forced eviction for work. Yet there is another path, which is neither an eviction nor a forced repossession, and which the moratorium does not touch: the voluntary departure agreement, commonly called cash for keys.
The principle of cash for keys
Cash for keys completely reverses the logic. Instead of imposing a departure, you propose it. The landlord offers the tenant compensation in exchange for their agreement to end the lease and leave on an agreed date. The tenant is free: they can accept, refuse or negotiate. If they accept, both parties sign a clear written agreement, and the dwelling is cleanly recovered, with no eviction, no ground to justify, no possible dispute — since, by definition, everyone is in agreement.
Since it is neither an eviction for work nor a forced repossession, this agreement falls outside the scope of the moratorium: it remains perfectly workable while Law 65 is in force. It is, very concretely, the path that remains open to a landlord who wishes to free up a dwelling before 2027. The only condition, but it is essential: the departure must be genuinely consented to, never extracted through pressure. An agreement signed under disguised coercion would fall back into the realm of harassment and bad faith.
Why it’s win-win
People sometimes imagine that a voluntary agreement is a one-way gift. That misunderstands it. A dwelling frozen far below market represents dormant value that is often considerable: once recovered and brought up to standard, it can create value frequently counted in the tens of thousands of dollars on the asset. Sharing part of that value with the tenant, in the form of compensation, amounts to converting a blockage into a result — legally and without litigation. The tenant, for their part, obtains a sum that helps them find new housing. No one is cheated; it is a consented exchange. To grasp the value logic underlying this approach, our rent optimization page details how this potential is calculated.
Key takeaway
The moratorium closes the eviction-for-work door, not the exit. The voluntary agreement (cash for keys) remains legal during Law 65, because it rests on the tenant’s free consent. It is the only clean way to recover a dwelling before 2027 — provided you never force anyone’s hand.
Why work through professionals
If the voluntary agreement is so simple on paper, why not carry it out yourself? Because, precisely, its apparent simplicity hides pitfalls that can turn a good idea into a lost case. The line between a legitimate negotiation and alleged harassment is thinner than one might think, and a poorly drafted agreement can be called into question.
Where improvising goes off the rails
A landlord who negotiates alone, in the grip of impatience, often makes the same mistakes: they push too hard, they imply the departure is “inevitable anyway,” they draft a vague agreement, or they forget that any undue pressure can be characterized as harassment. Each of these missteps can be enough to tip the process from the right side of the law to the wrong side. And once trust with the tenant is broken, it becomes very difficult to return to a calm agreement.
What a professional brings
A specialist structures the process from end to end: they assess the value truly at stake to calibrate a fair offer, they lead the conversation with the tenant within the framework — no pressure, no intimidation — they draft a compliant agreement that protects both parties, and they make sure every step respects the TAL rules. The result is a solid agreement, hard to challenge, obtained without exposing the landlord to a recourse.
The Opti Loyer model: pay only for results
At Opti Loyer, that is exactly what we do: help landlords recover and optimize their dwellings through voluntary agreements, in strict compliance with the legal framework and the moratorium. The initial analysis is free and with no commitment. And the model is pay only for results: you pay only if the agreement is reached. The financial risk of the process does not rest on you — it is on our side. That is what distinguishes a professional approach from a shortcut: we have no interest in pushing you toward a risky maneuver, since we are paid only by a clean and lasting result.
The lesson of these eviction cases is always the same: the shortcut costs tens of thousands of dollars and, worse still, your reputation. You only have one name in life. Protecting it is worth infinitely more than a single year’s rent gap. If you want to recover a dwelling without ever exposing yourself, let’s talk: request your free analysis.
In short: a shortcut that costs more than it earns
Law 65 sent a clear signal: until June 6, 2027, evictions for enlargement, subdivision or change of use — the engine of renovictions — are illegal. But this moratorium only makes more visible a truth that already existed: evicting under a false pretext was never a right, only a risk, backed by the right to remain in the dwelling, the prohibition on harassment and the penalties for bad faith. The landlord who attempts the shortcut exposes themselves to damages, to punitive damages, to delays and to a damaged reputation — far more than they hoped to gain.
The legal path, for its part, remains wide open: the voluntary agreement, cash for keys, makes it possible to recover a dwelling cleanly, with the tenant’s consent, without eviction or dispute. It is the smart way to convert a below-market rent into real value, during the moratorium and after. And that is precisely what Opti Loyer does: legally, pay only for results, the risk on our side.
This content is provided for informational purposes and does not constitute legal advice. The rules, deadlines and terms of Law 65 and the TAL may change; always confirm the state of the law in force or consult a legal advisor before acting.
