Letter addressed to Prime Minister François Legault,
Following the municipal elections, where the issue of housing has largely emerged as a priority, and while pressure is mounting from all sides to demand a major reinvestment in social and community housing, in the mini-budget presented on the 25th Last November, the Minister of Finance, Eric Girard, and the Minister of Municipal Affairs and Housing, Andrée Laforest, confirmed our fears and completely ignored the demands of the municipal and community sectors by completely abandoning the AccèsLogis program. A community housing program that has proven itself and which alone guaranteed the permanent sustainability of housing that is truly financially accessible to less well-off households.
In doing so, they put all the eggs in the private sector basket; a sector that sees housing as a business to make profits without regard to respect for the right to housing of several thousand poorly housed citizens and at the bottom of the social scale.
With this new program, your government will henceforth focus all of its intervention in favor of the market. Like the federal government’s Housing First approach, this is a complete paradigm shift and a shift away from the sovereign functions of the state in favor of the private sector. This without even having taken the time to consult the social and community housing organizations that have been loyal partners of the Government of Quebec for 25 years in the implementation of the Accès Logis program.
In the housing sector, the free market has never worked to ensure respect for the right to housing of the under-housed. If there are housing crises which, in the past, were able to be resolved, it is thanks to public interventions aimed at controlling market activity and counterbalancing its shortcomings. In its latest report, the UN Committee on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights deplored the shortage of social housing in Quebec and Canada. The international entities mandated to monitor States in the implementation of their international commitments slap our governments’ fingers, but we get the impression that they do not care. The new orientations of the mini-budget confirm this impression of the UN committee and organizations for the collective defense of the rights of the poorly housed like Logemen’occupe.
Crying needs
While the needs are dire and the number of new social and community housing units that would be needed to respond to the current housing crisis is estimated at at least 5,000 annually, the new so-called “affordable” housing program provides for construction across the country. Quebec of only 2,200 lucrative private dwellings over 5 years. The housing crisis will not be resolved with drops of water in the ocean!
In 1994, under the Conservative government of Brian Mulroney, there was a clear break in the way housing support policies were conceived, a break assimilated to a neoliberal turn. A rupture which deprived Quebec of approximately 80,000 social housing units and which greatly accentuated the current housing crisis.
Noticeably underfunded for 10 years, the AccèsLogis program has, to a certain extent, nevertheless minimized the impacts of the federal disengagement by promoting the construction of just over 35,000 social and community housing units by organizations that have not ‘have no purpose of profit. Housing that will remain affordable over the long term and that will remain sheltered from the speculative market and shocking phenomena that are increasingly common in the private market, such as renovations.
With this announcement, your government is inadvertently putting an end, and in a completely irresponsible manner, to this episode of progressive and innovative public intervention. With this new rupture, in the same ilk of the neoliberal policies of the Mulroney government, your government refuses to prioritize the only formula that guarantees truly affordable housing for households that are suffering the full force of the housing crisis and in a sustainable manner. For ideological reasons, you knowingly abandon nonprofit projects supported largely by the community, which belong to the communities and not to private interests which feed and perpetuate the speculative logic.
When the members of your Council of Ministers were sworn in in October 2018, you asked your new ministers to lead Quebec “in a spirit of proximity, humanity and openness”. During this ceremony, by quoting René Lévesque, a man who inspired you all your life according to your words, you also asked your ministers to govern by obtaining the support of the greatest number while inviting them to leave their offices to be “close to the world”.
With this revolting and completely inadmissible coup de force, it is clear that these two ministers have completely ignored your instructions. In these circumstances and given the inadmissible gaps that this new government orientation will create among the poorly housed in Quebec, we ask you to intervene quickly with Mr.me Laforest and Mr. Girard so that the AccèsLogis program is maintained and largely enhanced by immediate and significant additional investments, as requested by several large cities in Quebec and the entire community in housing; an environment that works truly close to the world as you wish.