Decrease in the rental stock, renovations, meteoric rise in rents, gentrification: access to housing has risen to the heart of citizens’ priorities in a manner unprecedented in the recent history of Quebec, thus becoming a central issue in the next election. The question of housing gives rise to many debates that oppose experts from different disciplines and is the subject of lively controversy since it affects two of the most fundamental rights, namely the right to property and the right to housing. The perspectives as well as the proposed solutions testify to particular conceptualizations of the economy and the role of the state. Nevertheless, there is a strong tendency, both at the level of political parties and of the various specialists, to concentrate attention and resources towards interventionism of financing and aid to the most deprived to the detriment of interventionism of regulation of economic exchanges. .
Thus, several recent studies in Quebec focus on populations struggling with housing difficulties. Based on an empirical view of specific and real residential situations, their authors identify the difficulties experienced by particular groups such as ethnic minorities, single-parent families, the elderly and people with physical or intellectual disabilities. This work raises fundamental questions, including those related to ethics and social responsibility. They highlight the shortcomings of the state as a service provider in the field of health and social services, while demanding more funding for community organizations.
In general, the speakers almost all call for more sustained intervention by governments in the field of aid to the most vulnerable populations, and not in the regulation of the market as such. Yet it is this same market that generates inequalities and perpetuates the causes of their vulnerability. In addition, the researchers’ parcel studies and the splitting of tenants into several study sub-groups have contributed to highlighting the difficulties experienced by certain minority or marginalized groups and, consequently, to promoting interventionist measures. funding directed to these populations.
Curiously, this approach, which favors social housing and assistance to the poor, agrees with the arguments of the proponents of economic liberalism. They insist that government interventionism be limited to sporadic aid, in the form of subsidies, while refusing to allow the State to get involved in an area which they consider to fall under a contractualist logic based on the principle of free market.
Among the economists who recognize that housing represents a social issue requiring government intervention, several advocate state funding solutions rather than policies to regulate economic exchanges. They criticize the obstacles that exchange regulation measures impose on the rental market and, more generally, on the real estate market. The solution, based on a neoliberal vision, seems all in all quite simple: deregulate the housing sector and provide assistance for the most disadvantaged.
However, the Quebec government took the path of economic regulation in 1951 with the Act respecting the Régie du logement. We then recognize a particular character to the residential lease; the law sets certain obligations and regulates its content. However, for these rules to have real effects, they must be accompanied by means allowing their application when one or other of the parties escapes its obligations. Although the legislator lays down principles and adopts laws whose objectives are to rebalance the power relations between landlords and tenants, the achievement of their objectives ultimately depends on the implementation of means ensuring that they are respected.
For example, the register of rents demanded by several social actors concerned about the excessive increase in prices is intended to be a solution to the shortcomings concerning the obligation to declare the previous rent, something already provided for by law. This measure is in reality only a means of effectively applying the law already in place which obliges to disclose to the new tenant the lowest rent paid for the last 12 months. Another example is that no supervisory body ensures that repossessions of housing authorized by the Administrative Housing Tribunal comply with what has been announced by the owner. However, the effectiveness of a law depends on the existence of coercive measures that ensure its application and compliance with the obligations it imposes.
The economic dynamics at work today in the field of housing bring new challenges, while real estate remains speculative and many apartments are taken from the residential rental market to become condominiums or accommodation short-term (Airbnb type). This raises the question of the regulation of the housing stock and the supervision of real estate investment in order to avoid certain problems relating to capitalization, including gentrification and the reduction in the stock of affordable housing.
The housing problem must be understood other than by a logic that equates it with a problem of poverty. It involves in-depth reflection on the behavior of investors, on the dynamics specific to real estate capital and on the power relations at work within the rental market itself.