“I’m like a queen here. »
Lorraine Charette enjoyed the sun on the balcony of her small studio in eastern Montreal on Friday noon, while dozens of elected officials debated in Quebec to seek solutions to the homelessness crisis.
The 62-year-old woman told me about the bad times she has experienced in recent years. Eviction from one’s accommodation. His brief stay on the street. His five years of purgatory in a dingy rooming house.
Then, this unexpected gift: accommodation.
A second chance.
Lorraine Charette is one of 19 tenants at Studios du Pas, a small complex built in record time during the pandemic. All housing is subsidized and occupied by people aged 55 and over who were homeless or in extremely precarious situations.
PHOTO HUGO-SÉBASTIEN AUBERT, THE PRESS
The interior of one of the 19 studios, which measure approximately 300 square feet each
Tenants pay a quarter of their monthly income, or $404 per month in M’s caseme Cart. They have access to specialized services, meals and activities at the community center located just a stone’s throw away. A real organized living environment.
“I almost don’t believe it yet,” she told me over the phone. My life has changed completely. The taste for living has come back to me. »
The sixty-year-old tells me of her new home as a miracle, and she is not wrong.
It took just 18 months from the original idea for the project to the tenants moving out.
An anomaly, for a social housing building.
Deadlines are usually calculated in years, when projects do not completely fail due to lack of financing – which is the case for a good number of them.
I am telling you the story of Lorraine Charette, because the question of access to housing is central to the current homelessness crisis. The two problems are intertwined.
Everyone agrees that we need to build more, but no one seems to agree on the most efficient way to do it.
At the summit on homelessness organized by the Union of Municipalities of Quebec (UMQ), which I attended on Friday in Quebec, this impasse was at the heart of most of the discussions.
Among the culprits: the multiplication of levels of government involved in financing projects.
Pointed out: the government of Quebec, through which all federal sums – we are talking here of hundreds of millions – intended for housing pass.
Almost all the amounts, in fact.
There are a handful of projects that were funded directly by Ottawa, in collaboration with the cities, without Quebec being part of the equation. Les Studios du Pas are among them.
This project was conceived with a real sense of urgency at the start of the COVID-19 pandemic.
In October 2020, Ottawa created a $1 billion program, called the Rapid Housing Initiative (RHI), which aimed to fund housing projects for homeless people across the country. The main criterion to qualify: that the work be carried out within 12 months.
It was a very ambitious, even unrealistic, target, but several community groups still wanted to take on the challenge.
In Montreal, the CDH Group, a social economy enterprise, contacted the Pas de la rue organization to propose a project that would be carried out with federal funds. The steps quickly got underway, and the firm L. McComber – living architecture, mandated to develop a concept, proposed a modular construction, prefabricated in the factory.
The City of Montreal, the borough, the contractors, in short, everyone involved worked diligently to remove the usual obstacles.
PHOTO PROVIDED BY THE L. MCCOMBER FIRM – LIVING ARCHITECTURE
Installation of prefabricated modules on site. Masonry and other elements were added later.
“I don’t want to advocate speed, but what should be noted is that the more people there are around the table, the longer it takes,” the architect stressed to me. Laurent McComber.
It took 18 months – rather than 12 – before the project welcomed its first tenants, which still remains an unprecedented pace.
“We had access to a short window of efficiency,” summarized a source at the heart of the development of this project.
The Pas Studios do not look like stacked construction trailers. The complex is beautiful and well integrated into the neighborhood. This is evidenced by the selections he has obtained, among others for the Awards of Excellence from the Order of Architects of Quebec.
Better yet: It cost $5.4 million, which averages out to $282,000 per 300 square foot studio.
This is at the bottom of the usual range for this type of project, and light years away from the bill for the Legault government’s Seniors’ Homes, whose average cost is close to a million per room.
Should we build modular residences across the four corners of Quebec to house our 10,000 homeless people? Of course not.
But this small example shows that there is a way to step on the accelerator, when the different levels of government, and their partners in the private and community sectors, are rowing in the same direction.
Right now there is around $900 million in federal funds available to build housing, which remains stuck somewhere between Ottawa and Quebec.
Talks have dragged on for months to determine how to send the check. To choose the color of the envelope and the format of the stamp.
We must press on, and quickly. Rediscover this sense of urgency which made it possible to perform small miracles during the pandemic, for the benefit of the poorly housed.
Unfortunately, there will be more and more of them.