No more lease transfers? Quebec is about to pass a new housing law. Here's what's in it

Quebec's controversial housing bill will be passed into law as early as Wednesday — and housing advocates say that, when it does, lease transfers will essentially be dead. 

Housing Minister France-Élaine Duranceau has pitched the new law, currently known as Bill 31, as a way to "re-establish balance between renters and landlords and increase housing supply." 

But it has drawn the ire of housing advocates who argue that the bill's most significant impact will be the power it gives landlords to deny a lease transfer for any reason. 

So, what's in the bill? 

Lease transfers gave tenants the right to transfer their lease to another person — there were mechanisms in place to protect landlords, but they had to prove they had serious concerns about a new tenant to justify refusing a lease transfer. 

Now, a landlord can do so for any reason — and can terminate the lease if a tenant asks to transfer it. 

For housing advocates, lease transfers were a way to pass on low rents to others and ensure that landlords couldn't hike rents between tenants. 

In Montreal, where the housing crisis is pricing some tenants out of the market for an apartment, a one-bedroom apartment now costs an average of $1,744 per month, according to rentals.ca. 

Lease transfers, by comparison, are generally lower and can come in below $1,000, often for apartments where leases have been passed from tenant to tenant for years, sometimes decades, keeping rents frozen in the past, in a sense. 

Some landlords have decried the practice, arguing that lease transfers can keep rents artificially low, placing a financial burden on the landlord.

The housing minister has argued that landlords have a right to approve anyone renting a unit from them, something they can't do with a lease transfer.

"The landlord owns the building, they invested in it and took the risks, and it should be up to them to decide who lives there," Duranceau said last year.

In response to criticism from housing advocates and opposition parties, Duranceau has touted Bill 31's pro-tenant content. 

The bill includes some additional new protections for tenants.