Major increases in their rent, controversial vacation leases, judicial procedures: owners of mobile houses that praise the land they occupy all year at a naturist center in Terrebonne have said a nightmare since the company was bought in 2022.
It is “the security” of the places that had encouraged Richard Beaulieu and his wife, Danielle, to erect a mobile house on the Reclus site, kept by a barrier at the entrance, from this naturist center, to which they rent a plot of land. The couple welcomed The duty On the terrace of his property in the company of several other owners who have made their mobile home their permanent residence, in some cases for a few decades.
“I went there to raise my children,” says Lynda Strauss, who settled full in this naturist center in 1998. “Naturism, that made them discover a different standard of living from the majority,” she adds.
A leaping rent
For years, the former owner of the premises, Réjean Martineau, had just imposed an “too minimal” increase in the rent of his tenants annually, said by email Sylvie Richard, who acquired this naturist center in February 2022.
Consequently, the new owner of the premises spent “tens of thousands of dollars to repair the swimming pool, which is an essential element of the campsite”, in addition to carrying out a lot of repairs on “various rolling facilities, buildings and accessories”, says the businesswoman. A “catch-up” in rents was therefore necessary, she explains.
Thus in 2022, several owners of mobile houses remaining on this land – who has more than a hundred – had the unpleasant surprise to receive a significant increase in their rent. Tenant Audrey Nadeau and her spouse received an increase, for the following year, of 27.6 % of their rent in the fall of 2022. The latter has since been increased by 14.5 % in two years. Another tenant, Lynda Strauss, saw his rent increase by 11 %, for the year 2023. This increase then amounted to 13.5 % and 7 % in the next two years.
In Quebec, an owner can offer an increase in rent as high as he wishes to his tenants. The latter can however contest this increase before the Administrative Housing Tribunal (TAL) if they have a standard lease.
“We are retirees there. We came here to rest, “says Sylvie Fournier, who claims to have spent more than $ 20,000 in lawyers to oppose the increase in his rent – which has gone from single to double in three years – and keep his right to house in her mobile house with her husband. His file has not yet been heard by the TAL.
“If they are imposed on them with staggering increases, it will force them indirectly to leave because they will not be able to pay them. So it is very worrying, ”explains the worker Amélie Pelland, of the Lanaudière action-housing organization.
A judiciary
Some tenants of a plot of land from the naturist center have thus refused to pay the increase in their rent, judging it abusive in relation to the recommendations of the administrative housing court (TAL). They then just continued to pay the amount of their old rent.
The owner subsequently sent a notice of non-renewal of the lease last year to some of her tenants, giving them the option of selling their building or moving their mobile home by putting their land in its original state. She also proposed to buy the mobile house of some of her tenants, who are currently carrying out steps before the Tal and the Superior Court to clarify their rights and obligations, and be able to continue to stay on this site.
“These were offers made subject to the fair market value of buildings in order to avoid the judicialization of our debates and to buy peace”, justifies Sylvie Richard, who ensures that he has “no intention to carry out evictions”.
“However, we have three active legal files with members whose behavior has become intolerable,” she adds.
The judge of the Superior Court Éric Dufour also decided on January 6, after a prosecution started by the Naturist Oasis Center, which Audrey Nadeau, his spouse and the two tenants of another mobile house on this site cannot be recognized as the signatories of residential leases, since appendices have been added to their mobile house over the years. Result: these properties have lost “the necessary conditions” to be considered “mobile”. However, these criteria must be satisfied to allow tenants of land intended to accommodate this type of property to benefit from the protections included in the housing lease, concluded Judge Dufour.
This judgment relating only to the jurisdiction of the higher court to look into this file, the future of the tenants concerned on this site must still be decided by the courts.
Worrying clauses
The tenants feel all the more threatened to have to leave their mobile home since Sylvie Richard sent several of them, last year, a vacation lease, which many refused to sign. The document, that The duty was able to consult, includes a series of clauses aimed at giving the owner the ability to terminate the lease in a “unilateral” manner and to expel “immediately” the tenants who would commit certain “cases of defect” listed in this lease.
“In this resort, we give up all our rights,” says Sylvie Fournier, who refused to sign this one.
The document provides in particular that a tenant can be expelled from this naturist center if he “shows gross indecency and/or non-compliance with the rules on naturism”. He will undergo the same consequences if he “publicly defames” the owner of the premises or if his “state of health” is deemed “incompatible with the safety standards of the Oasis naturist center”.
In an interview, the lawyer specializing in housing law Antoine Morneau-Sénéchal recalls that the holiday lease is addressed, by definition, to “short-term” rentals. It therefore does not allow “the right to maintain in the premises”, recalls the lawyer, according to whom it is important that the tenants are aware that by signing this one, “they renounce certain rights”.
“Our main concern about the qualification of housing lease is that the Civil Code gives the tenants rights which are contrary to the essential standards of a family practice of naturism which implies guarantees of security and compliance with binding common life rules”, evokes for its part Sylvie Richard, in order to justify its decision to send a lease of vacation to its tenants.
In the summer of 2023, the administrative judge of Tal Daniel Gilbert concluded that the contract uniting the tenant Lynda Strauss to this naturist center was a vacation contract. The Tal had thus declined any competence in this file, recalling that, in this type of file, “each situation is a case of species”.
Other tenants of this naturist center will thus go to the Tal next month in the hope that it will recognize their right to maintain in the premises.
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