If the housing crisis is regularly covered by the media, it is experienced daily by too many people: unsanitary conditions, gentrification, non-existent family housing, endless waiting list for social housing, renovations, discrimination, exorbitant rents… more and more citizens find themselves in a precarious situation, often powerless in the face of the impossibility of finding adequate housing according to their needs.
The figures unveiled Monday during the “Acting together for housing” event, organized by Centraide of Greater Montreal, paint a dizzying portrait. Currently, there are at least 360,000 households in Montreal, Laval and the South Shore who cannot make ends meet on a monthly basis. Faced with the shortage and the cost of housing, these people and, in many cases, their children are no longer able to meet their basic needs such as housing, food, clothing and transportation. Nearly one in five households in Greater Montreal finds itself in this situation, which requires strong and unequivocal mobilization.
In 2022, the shortfall in the family budgets of some 360,000 affected households totals a theoretical social deficit of $3.6 billion.
Part of this deficit is absorbed by support from the community, by investments in government services and by the compromises that people must make to meet their basic needs (insufficient food, housing that is too small, unsanitary or inadequate, etc.) . To this are inevitably added the social costs on the health systems, education, etc.
Solutions exist. In fact, it is the addition of solutions that is essential given the magnitude of the situation. The social issue of housing is too complex and multidimensional to be carried by a single player. It is the whole of society that must be involved: citizens, tenants and owners (whether private, community or institutional), community organizations, consultation bodies, institutions, investors, business community, philanthropic actors as well as all levels of government. By adopting a systemic vision with ambitious objectives based on common indicators of success, we can and must succeed.
To do this, all actors are invited, according to their expertise and responsibilities, to register in coherence with five levers of action starting with that concerning data.
There is a consensus in academic circles and among the actors concerned that it is difficult to have a fair and complete portrait of the situation, with all the necessary nuances. Available data is not aggregated and shared and is often incomplete or outdated. While the formula for capturing household residual income presented by Centraide on Monday is a new tool that makes it possible to better understand the number of households affected by a monthly deficit each year, it is essential to accompany this indicator with a shared data platform that promotes the implementation of action monitoring mechanisms.
As the second and third levers of action, the development and maintenance of adequate and inexpensive housing will require moving beyond the historical paradigm. To give a general idea of the need, it should be noted that an annual average of 1,400 subsidized housing units have been added in Greater Montreal since 1995. Thus, the supply of subsidized housing has remained at a rate of less than 5% of the residential park. By comparison, the average share of subsidized housing in Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) countries is 7%. Consequently, to catch up with our collective delay on the OECD by 2030, we must add 36,000 new subsidized housing units, a large part of which must be devoted to social and community housing, thus allowing the development of a housing stock that is sustainably affordable for next generations. To achieve this, we must therefore multiply our average annual effort over the past 20 years by 3.6. This is certainly an ambitious objective, but essential to meet the reality of thousands of households in Greater Montreal.
For their part, the fourth and fifth levers of action, namely that of rights and access to justice as well as that of community support, force us to depart from the usual logic. The crisis that is raging is not only an issue of housing to be preserved and built, it is a crisis with a human face. Supporting people in vulnerable situations is part of the adequacy.
It is by pushing back the barriers of collaboration, by looking forward with humility and responsibility and, above all, by daring bold and sustainable initiatives that we will be able to build a society where the right to housing is a reality for all. The impetus and the will of the various partners to engage have never been so evident. More than ever, we must act together for housing.
*Co-signatories: Stéphane Boyer, Mayor of Laval; Catherine Fournier, Mayor of Longueuil; Valérie Plante, Mayor of Montreal; Béatrice Alain, Director General of the Chantier d’économie sociale; Halah Al-Ubaidi, Executive Director of the NDG Community Council; Louis Audet, Chairman of the Board of Cogeco Inc. and the Old Brewery Mission; Janie Béïque, President and Chief Executive Officer of the Fonds de solidarité FTQ; Alain Bernier, coordinator of the Coalition for the right to housing of the agglomeration of Longueuil (CDLAL); Nathalie Bernier, Chair of the Board of the Centraide of Greater Montreal Foundation; Sharon Bitensky, Senior Advisor, Morris and Rosalind Goodman Family Foundation; Pierre Boivin OC, CQ, President and CEO of Claridge Inc.; Richard Bond; Caroline Bougie, Chair of the Board of Centraide of Greater Montreal; Alice Boulianne, coordinator of Initiative locale St-François en action; Graham Carr, rector and vice-chancellor of Concordia University; Michèle Chappaz, Executive Director of the Movement to End Homelessness in Montreal; Jean-Denis Charest, President and CEO of the East Montreal Chamber of Commerce; Vincent Chiara, president of Groupe MACH inc. ; Jean-Marc Chouinard; Éric Cimon, General Manager of the Association of TSOs of Quebec; Andrea Clarke, President of the Lucie and André Chagnon Foundation; Stéphan Corriveau, Executive Director of the Community Housing Transformation Center; Micheline Côté, director of the ACEF de Laval; Edith Cyr, Executive Director of Bâtir son quartier; Michèle DeGuire, President and Executive Director of Centraide of Greater Montreal from 1991 to 2012; Clément Demers, architect and urban planner, project management consultant; Chantal Desjardins, Executive Director of the Fédération des OSBL d’habitation de Montréal; Nadia Duguay, Executive Director of the Béati Foundation; Julie Favreau, lawyer, ASC, president of Fi3; Stéphane Febbrari Vermette, director of the Peter-McGill neighborhood table; Jean-Marc Fournier, President and CEO of the Urban Development Institute; Martin Fournier, general manager of Atelier habitation Montréal; Simon Gamache, Executive Director of Pride Montreal; Philippe Garant, General Manager of the Chantier d’économie sociale Trust; Mitch Garber; Helene Gasc; Allan Gaudreault, Consulting Analyst; Pierre-Étienne Gendron-Landry, Managing Director of Société Logique; Annick Germain, director of urban studies programs, tenured professor-researcher at INRS; Samuel Gervais, co-founder and business development of Solutions Immobilier Solidaire (SiS); Mazen Houdeib, Executive Director of the Regrouping of Ethnic Montreal Organizations for Housing (ROMEL); Anne-Marie Hubert, Managing Partner for Eastern Canada of EY; James Hughes, President and CEO of Old Brewery Mission; William Jegher, Partner, EY Quebec Transactional Real Estate Practice Leader; Heather Johnston, Executive Director of Quebec Native Projects; Assia Kada, general coordinator of Concertation Ville-Émard/Côte-St-Paul; Jacques Lamarre; Claude Léger, P.Eng., LL. B., vice-president of project governance at Macogep; Xavier Leloup, professor of habitat and housing sociology at INRS; Laurent Levesque, General Manager of the Work Unit for the Implementation of Student Housing (UTILE); Isabelle Marcoux, Chairman of the Board of Transcontinental Inc. ; Éric Martel, President and CEO of Bombardier Inc. ; Caroline Maso; Richard Massé; Luc Maurice, founder of Le Groupe Maurice and president of the Luc Maurice Foundation; Karel Mayrand, President and CEO of the Foundation of Greater Montreal; Philippe Meilleur, Executive Director of Native Montreal; Kerlande Mibel, President and Founder of the International Black Economic Forum and Chair of the Board of Village Urbain; Marie-Josee Neveu; Ivelina Nikolai, Executive Director of the Montérégie Regional Federation of Housing NPOs; Gilles Ouimet; Sébastien Parent-Durand, General Manager of the Alliance of Affordable Housing Corporations in Greater Montreal (ACHAT); Magali Picard, president of the FTQ; Robert Pilon, coordinator of the Federation of low-income housing tenants of Quebec; Roger Plamondon, President of Groupe Immobilier Broccolini and co-president of Chantier Montréal Affordable; Patrick Préville, General Manager of the Federation of Cooperative Housing of Quebec (FHCQ); Jocelyn Proteau; Ron Rayside, architect and founder of Rayside Labossière; Richard J. Renaud, CM, Chairman and CEO of TNG Corporation; Claire Richer Leduc; Rémy Robitaille, director of Solidarité Ahuntsic; Jonathan Roy, CEO of the CDC de la Pointe; Richard Ryan, housing consultant; Céline Saint-Pierre, professor emeritus of sociology at the University of Quebec in Montreal; Christian Savard, general manager of Vivre en ville; Caroline Senneville, president of the CSN; Eric St-Pierre, Executive Director of the Trottier Family Foundation; Élise Tanguay, Director of Public Affairs of the Work Unit for the Implementation of Student Housing (UTILE); Guillaume Tremblay, Mayor of Mascouche and President of the Housing and Social Cohesion Commission of the Montreal Metropolitan Community, President of the Housing Committee of the Union of Quebec Municipalities; Marie Turcotte, Executive Director of Ex aequo; Natalie Voland, President & Chief Vision Officer of Lofts MTL; Christian Yaccarini, President and CEO of Angus Development Corporation