At least 360,000 households in Greater Montreal – or 19% – do not have enough income to pay for their housing and meet their basic needs such as food, clothing or travel, denounces Centraide on the basis of a report carried out (free of charge) by McKinsey.
There was “a glaring lack of data [à jour] on the human impact of the housing crisis, said Monday Claude Pinard, president and general manager of Centraide of Greater Montreal.
Hence this study commissioned from the McKinsey firm, which established a residual income index, ie the amount left over to households after paying their rent and basic needs.
Currently, the study calculates, a household must have an annual income of at least $28,000 to make ends meet (have a “positive residual”, to use the expression used in study) in the greater Montreal area.
Centraide hopes that this indicator will make it possible to monitor the number of households with insufficient income on an annual basis.
Food banks are now seeing people in need arrive “as early as the 5th of every month,” notes Pinard.
The shortfall of families also translates, recalls Mr. Pinard, into households that have to uproot themselves from their communities, into children who have to change schools and into significant financial anxiety.
Benoit Dorais, responsible for housing within the Plante administration, considers the situation “critical”.
In his opinion, the portrait is even more serious than that portrayed by Centraide, insofar as, he points out, the study presented “is based on the typical household which has managed to find housing at the right price”, which is far from being the case for everyone.
Soraya Martinez Ferrada, Member of Parliament for Hochelaga and Parliamentary Secretary for Housing, for her part stressed the importance, for Quebec and Ottawa, of working hand in hand, while respecting each other’s skills, “to bring out of the ground housing “.