A three-bedroom apartment in the Plateau-Mont-Royal borough offered at $1,700 per month may be considered affordable, according to the new grid of maximum rents eligible for a program of the City of Montreal which subsidizes the renovation of housing, and arouses passions.
In the winter of 2020, the City of Montreal set up a program called “Réno Logement Affordable”, which aims to financially support the owners of buildings with more than six dwellings, but less than five storeys, in their renovation work. . An initiative then set up to fight against the problems of insalubrity on the rental market of the metropolis.
Owners can thus obtain up to $500,000 to renovate a building, or a maximum of $14,000 per dwelling in eligible work. To be eligible for these subsidies, however, owners must offer one-third of their units in a building at an “affordable” rent. These units must therefore respect “ceiling rents” set up by the City, which sets them at 95% of the median market rents in each borough and for different sizes of housing.
With the real estate market in full swing in Montreal, the City raised the rents listed on this grid for the first time on 1er September 2021, then again this year following the adoption of a point to this effect on the agenda of the Executive Committee meeting on Wednesday morning. “As market rents have evolved since the last update of the by-law, it is proposed to update these ceiling rents” in order to maintain the same “pool of eligible buildings” for this program, justify the City’s decision documents.
“Indeed, the increase in rents has the effect of making many buildings ineligible for this program, if the ceilings are not adjusted”, can we read.
A significant increase
The new grid increases the maximum rent for affordable three-bedroom housing in the Plateau-Mont-Royal borough by 11%, from $1,530 to $1,700 per month, noted The duty. The increase is similar for 4 and a half units, whose ceiling rent rose from $940 to $1,050 in this sector.
The maximum rent for a unit with three bedrooms or more has increased by 21% in the boroughs of Ahuntsic-Cartierville and Verdun, thus crossing the symbolic threshold of $1,000 per month. It also reaches 1120 dollars per month in Côte-Des-Neiges – Notre-Dame-de-Grâce, the most populous borough of Montreal, as well as 1330 dollars in Ville-Marie, up 14% in one year.
“Rents on the private market have increased a lot,” admits the community organizer of the Ahuntsic-Cartierville Housing Committee, in reaction to this new affordable rent schedule from the City. “On the other hand, even if we say that statistically it’s affordable, if we base ourselves on people’s ability to pay, it’s not really,” continues Karina Montambeault.
“Of course, a three-bedroom unit at 1090 in Ahuntsic is not expensive, based on the market price. But compared to people’s ability to pay, it’s far too expensive,” continues the community organizer. She also deplores that the City’s program only requires that a third of the housing whose renovation is subsidized respect the “ceiling rents” in question. “It bothers me a lot. »
For two-bedroom units, marked increases in affordable rents are also noted in Montreal North (+7.8%), in Rivière-des-Prairies-Pointe-aux-Trembles (+7.5%) and in Verdun (+9.8%), among others.
“The logic of so-called affordable housing is to respect a logic of the market, so it has nothing to do with people’s ability to pay”, also notes the spokesperson for the Regroupement des Comités Logement et Associations de Quebec tenants, Cédric Dussault, who finds it “scandalous” that the City is funding the renovation of housing “which is not truly affordable”.
The cost of rents, he notes, is increasing faster than inflation and “much faster” than household incomes, which find themselves caught off guard in several Montreal boroughs. “There are more and more low-income people who will no longer have a place to live,” if we do not put a brake on these rapid rent increases, warns Mr. Dussault.
“Inevitable”, according to the City
Called to react, the cabinet of the mayor of Montreal, Valérie Plante, affirms that the modifications of the rents registered in this program were “inevitable” in order to be able to increase “the number of dwellings eligible for subsidies”. “Not increasing the thresholds would only have the effect of contributing to the decline in affordability in the city,” argues press officer Marikym Gaudreault.
The Corporation of Quebec Real Estate Owners (CORPIQ) deplores for its part not having been consulted by the City before the update of the affordable rent grid included in this program, which nevertheless concerns its members. “I think that we could have brought enriching elements to their calculations, but we were not consulted”, deplores the director of public affairs Marc-André Plante.
CORPIQ also intends to “inquire” with the City in the coming weeks to see how it could help “improve” this program, he says.