Single Montreal mom fears homelessness after she says her lease transfer was refused

A single Montreal mother of three fears she may be homeless come July 1 after she says a landlord denied a lease transfer less than a week before Moving Day.

"You go to the Regie de Logement, you get the form, you fill it out, and it's supposed to be that simple. We did all the steps and the landlord came back and said ‘no,’" Anick Johnson told CTV.

She believes she was denied because of a poor credit score, which she says is the result of a bad decision to co-sign a lease for friend 14 years ago.

She’s one of many in the city still struggling to find housing just days before Moving Day.

"This is the worst year that I've seen in my almost three decades of work in the field of tenants’ rights," said Margaret Van Nooten, a social rights worker with housing group Project Genesis.

The city says it's aware of 95 families that will likely be without a home on Saturday.

Mayor Valerie Plante says the city has a plan to take those people in. Still, she says, there’s a lot of work to do.

"We don't want to be building a strategy based on an emergency on the 1st of July, there has to be more homes, there has to be more construction,” she said Wednesday.

“We need to protect what is already existing," she added.

Also on Wednesday, 14 mayors across Quebec signed an open letter calling on the province to create a lease registry -- a tool advocates say will help keep rents affordable and easily accessible.

"An incoming tenant would always have access to the amount of the rent and mechanisms so that the landlord would know there was no escape and rents couldn't be increased between tenants," said Van Nooten.

Johnson suspects the landlord wants to significantly raise the rent on the apartment she was hoping to rent. When reached by CTV, he denied that.

She says she’s hoping to have her case ruled on by the housing tribunal before the end of the week. For now, she doesn't have a plan B.

Estimates are Quebec has a shortage of around 100 thousand units -- leaving many, like Johnson, wondering what comes next.