Village Urbain, a non-profit organization that wants to facilitate the construction of co-housing in Quebec, should take a crucial first step in July by acquiring land in Lachine.
Posted at 12:00 p.m.
“We are super happy,” says Estelle Le Roux Joky, who co-founded Village Urbain with Pascal Huynh and who also works closely with Lucy Chen. “But we will wait until we have gone to the notary before celebrating. »
“We see the need, so it’s sure that motivates us,” says the organization’s executive director. When we started, with the incubator of the house of social innovation, in 2019, there was already the beginning of a housing crisis. We saw populations getting older, people more and more alone on their own, with fewer and fewer connections between them. The ground was already very fertile for cohousing, which allows a more collective life. In March 2020, the pandemic came to exacerbate all issues of social isolation and put the wind in our sails. »
Ecological and economic interest
Cohousing interests people who want to be less alone, to share a meal from time to time and to do activities with their neighbours. “Each has their own completely independent accommodation, with their own kitchen, bathroom, etc., but the accommodations are reduced to a minimum, since the residents have spaces and resources in common, such as a large collective kitchen, a space work or a workshop, where people have the opportunity to meet, she says. This obviously represents an ecological interest, but also an economic one, by creating an affordable way of life. »
Village Urbain is working on various projects, including one in Laval, where a location has not yet been found. The most advanced is in Lachine, where a public consultation and a referendum took place. The land, which should be acquired in July and where a three- and four-storey complex would be built comprising some thirty condos and ten rental units, is located on rue Notre-Dame, on the site of the former Vitrerie Lachine business. .
PHOTO ALAIN ROBERGE, THE PRESS
Estelle Le Roux Joky is very close to the land that Village Urbain will be able to acquire in July, in Lachine. This one is on the other side of the barrier, in the background.
We could call ourselves a community real estate developer, in the sense that we look for land, we design projects, we develop them, and then we sell or rent them. But we are a non-profit organization and we aim to create cohousing that will remain affordable in the long term.
Estelle Le Roux Joky, co-founder of Village Urbain
The first step that will soon be taken, the purchase of the land in Lachine, could not be done without the financial support of the Caisse d’économie solidaire Desjardins and a philanthropic organization, which Estelle Le Roux Joky considers to be partners.
The success of Habitat Quebec
“The issue on which Village Urbain is working has become even more relevant over the past year, not just in the Montreal area,” said André Fortin, account manager and strategic advisor in housing, collective business services, at the Caisse solidarity economy Desjardins.
“Village Urbain is trying to create something that will be affordable from the start and will try to stay that way, by introducing mechanisms such as the creation of a land trust and clauses in purchase contracts, to ensure that units will not become less affordable over the years, explains Mr. Fortin. The first project of its kind, Habitat Québec, which we supported financially and which was completed in 2013, is an extremely important success from an architectural, environmental and community standpoint, but by their own admission, the owners have a small problem because they did not originally plan to limit the value of the units. This project was affordable at the beginning and is less and less over the resales.
“Estelle is a very interesting social entrepreneur,” he continues. Not only does she want to do a project in Lachine, but she also wants to use this model to repeat it all over Quebec. She also wants to create a mechanism that will allow tenants to become owners, to ensure rotation in terms of social diversity. »