OMG I know a girl who went through exactly this. She signed a 1 year lease on an apartment in a ski town, then a few months in out of nowhere, her landlady was kicking her out. Why? Landlord decided to Airbnb the place for a month to make twice the profit. And she had signed a lease! This was a town in France, and so it's affecting places around the world.
I used to live in France, and I remember hearing about how it's functionally impossible to evict someone who refuses to move out.
There are many horror stories of people squatting places, or just not paying rent anymore. The police won't intervene as it's a civil matter, and you need to get a court order which takes anywhere from 6 months to multiple years. The tennant has 2 months to comply with the court order. If after the two months, the tennant still hasn't complied, you need to get a "commissaire de justice" to execute the eviction (who is typically appointed by the court).
In addition to this, there are specific months in the year where you cannot evict people (November-April). Whenever a tennant wants to live somewhere for free, they just use that clemency period as a weapon and make the court proceedings wait from one year to the next. Obviously, "for free" means you still owe the rent after all is said and done. But if you file for bankruptcy and wait 10 years, the debt is forgiven.
If a landlord attempts to evict the tennant themselves, they risk a 30k€ fine and 3 years in jail.
In other words: your friend was most likely served an illegal eviction (it's also not possible to end a "bail" in France on a whim), and she could've just stayed put.
Edit: the reason for the fine/jail time for a landlord is because an individual's home is considered quite sacred. Trespassing is taken very seriously by the law, it's called "violation de domicile" for a landlord to enter a tennant's home without permission.
There are very few reasons for a landlord to prematurely terminate the lease in France, and deciding to lent it for more money is specifically not one of them. In winter, you can't evict anyone at all (making money from ski town rentals likely means this is winter high season). There is unfortunately a lot of abuse, especially if the tenant is young and/or foreign and wouldn't know how to fight back.
