For six years, the City of Montreal has owned the grounds of the former Hippodrome in the west of the city. She hopes to build an “eco-model” neighborhood there that could help solve the housing crisis, but developers have so far expressed little interest.
The ambitions of municipal authorities are costly, says Pierre Boivin, president and CEO of the private investment firm Claridge. The former president of the Montreal Canadiens co-directs the Acceleration Group for the Optimization of the Hippodrome Project (GALOPH), whose role is to develop a new subdivision model for the place.
The previous model put in place by the administration of Mayor Valérie Plante was impossible for developers to achieve, because they could not make a profit from it. “Because of market prices, construction costs and the regulatory framework for subsidized housing, this economic model could not work,” says Boivin.
For some critics, the Plante administration has not put in place a clear plan to extend the public infrastructure on which any future development on the Hippodrome site depends.
This is an example of the difficulty for Canadian cities to come to the aid of their poor and to defend social values while responding to the need to build new housing.
On its website, the City of Montreal says it wants to “make the future Namur-Hippodrome district a carbon-neutral living environment focused on active and public transportation, with the presence of large green spaces”. It plans to build 12,500 housing units there over the next few years.
But so far, the municipal administration has only reached one agreement. Espace La Traversée will build a building with 200 to 250 totally affordable rental units.
In the fall of 2022, the City had launched a call for tenders for the sale of a second parcel of land, but it did not receive any bids. The call included an obligation to have 60% affordable housing over a period of at least 30 years. The minimum bid was $10 million.
detractors
The city was asking too much, says the Montreal Economic Institute, a right-wing think tank. “When you take into account the high price of land and the small number of market-priced homes that can be built there, it’s very difficult for developers to make money with that,” said spokesperson Renaud. Brossard. Consequently, they are not interested. And instead of having a bustling neighborhood with 6,000 homes, we have vacant land and no subdivision plan in sight. »
Former city councilor Marvin Rotrand, an opponent of the Plante administration, expresses his doubts about what he calls “the utopian vision” of the municipality. According to him, it will not attract promoters. He criticizes the City for scaring off the private sector by setting high targets while failing to adopt an infrastructure plan.
” [L’administration] believes he can dictate orders to promoters, but they turn their backs on him, he says. The City is disconnected; that’s the reality. She does not know how to solve these problems. »
For the City of Montreal, affordable housing targets are not the cause of the delay in the Hippodrome project. Benoit Dorais, head of housing on the Montreal executive committee, acknowledges that developers want a more comprehensive plan for the area.
The City formed GALOPH following the failure of the second call for tenders. Its mandate is to present a new business plan to attract private developers and meet the “social objectives” of the municipality. This should be presented in early 2024.
Mr. Dorais says he is convinced that the group will respect the objectives of the City of Montreal in terms of affordable housing.
“The group accepted the vision of the City of Montreal, he underlines. It will not tell us that we need less affordable housing. Everyone says we need lots of housing, lots of affordable housing, lots of social housing. »
Mr. Boivin also believes that the City should not lower its objectives, but he believes that an effective plan will require the support of all governments and promoters in order to finance a subsidized housing and infrastructure program.
“We will do everything to break the mold and create a new model for this problem. Otherwise, we will never succeed,” he says.
This dispatch was produced with the financial assistance of the Meta Exchange and The Canadian Press for the news.