The mayoress of Longueuil, Catherine Fournier, and the mayor of Laval, Stéphane Boyer, announced Monday the holding of a summit on housing on August 26 in Laval in order to find solutions to the housing crisis.
The Housing Summit will take place one month before the provincial elections and will bring together, for one day, nearly 300 people, including the Mayor of Quebec, Bruno Marchand, and the Mayor of Montreal, Valérie Plante.
They will try to find ways to resolve the housing crisis affecting several regions of the province.
“We see it everywhere in Quebec, everywhere the price of housing is exploding, for example in Laval, the price of rents increased by 30% between 2016 and 2021 and the price of access to property increased by 66% “, indicated the mayor of Laval during a press conference in front of the city hall of Longueuil.
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“We sincerely believe that the summit will provide the necessary impetus for concerted action, the effects of which will quickly be felt by the people of Quebec. This is our wish,” added Catherine Fournier, Mayor of Longueuil.
Land, regulations and financial levers
Elected officials, but also representatives of the community, entrepreneurs and academics, will explore “three families of solutions”, indicated the mayor of Laval.
“The first is land, so how to access land at a suitable price; the second family will be regulatory strategies, and therefore what regulations municipalities can adopt to have an influence on housing and affordability,” explained Stéphane Boyer.
Financial levers will also be explored.
“Can we have business models that are innovative, ways of financing projects that are out of the ordinary, for example a cooperative? “, specified the mayor of Laval.
A few days before July 1, several municipalities must put in place measures to help families who are struggling to find housing.
For example, the City of Laval has created a service that lists all the housing available on the territory in order to support households in their search. For those who cannot find accommodation on July 1, the City can pay for a hotel room and temporarily store the family’s belongings.
“This service has been new since 2020. Last year, we accompanied 131 families, this year as of June 19, we received 191 requests for support, so we see that there is an increase”, explained Mayor Boyer.
On the Longueuil side, Mayor Fournier indicated that 11 families had asked for “concrete help because they have no housing as July 1 approaches”.
A month before the elections
The Housing Summit will take place a few weeks before the provincial elections, which will allow municipalities to properly convey their demands to the various provincial party leaders.
“Are we going to reiterate our demands? Yes. Is this the main objective? No,” said Mayor Boyer, specifying that the summit aims above all to create cooperation between the federal, provincial and municipal levels.
“When the federal and the provincial do not speak to each other, there is an impact in our cities and we need better coordination between the three levels” in order to resolve the crisis, added Stéphane Boyer.
Representatives of major municipal associations such as the Union of Quebec Municipalities (UMQ), the Quebec Federation of Municipalities (FQM) and the Metropolitan Community of Montreal (CMM), but also the Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation (CMHC) , the Vivre en ville organization, the Community Housing Transformation Center (CTCC) and the Urban Development Institute (IDU) will be present at the summit.