During the last election campaign, the Coalition avenir Québec, whose elected officials were slow to admit that there was a housing crisis, promised to deliver 11,700 affordable housing units during its mandate.
However, 40% of these new dwellings, or 4700 units, had already been the subject of government announcements before the elections. Last June, the Legault government announced that the Fonds immobilier de solidarité FTQ and the Mouvement Desjardins would be responsible for providing stable funding — up to 35 years — for 1,000 social and affordable housing units each, projects set up by cooperatives and non-profit organizations (NPOs) specializing in the field. Typically, the Quebec government assumes half of the bill, in this case $175,000 per unit, for a total of $350 million. At $350,000 a door, it’s expensive, but it reflects current construction costs that have skyrocketed in recent years.
Another part of this announcement will allow 1,000 households, within five years, to become owners of a condo in a cooperative formula, an initiative of Fondaction and the Quebec Confederation of Housing Cooperatives. For the government, the contribution is much lower, at $45,000 per condo, or $45 million.
In addition to these projects, there are 1,700 housing units financed at a cost of 256 million by a new program, the Quebec Affordable Housing Program (PHAQ), launched in 2021 by the Minister of Municipal Affairs and Housing, Andrée Laforest. The particularity of the PHAQ is that it is based on one-off calls for tenders. According to Finance Minister Eric Girard’s latest economic update, one of the “benefits” of the program is that it allows the private for-profit sector–not just the private community — to receive government assistance. Instead of a guarantee to maintain an affordable rent for 35 years, the private developer can be released from this constraint after 10 years. If we take into account the contribution of $41 million from the federal government, through the Canada-Quebec agreement on housing, the cost of the PHAQ for the State is not lower than that of the partnership with the Fonds de solidarity and Desjardins.
It seems that during the first PHAQ call for tenders in 2021, the private sector did not rush to the gate. The vast majority of accepted projects come from NPOs whose area of expertise is social and affordable housing. One can also wonder whether, under the PHAQ, state-subsidized housing will become unaffordable after 10 years for the benefit of private developers.
Be that as it may, what is special about the CAQ’s promise to deliver 11,700 housing units in four years is that the Legault government has failed to meet its commitment to ensure the construction of the 15,000 dwellings that the Couillard government had left in the lurch. According to an inventory obtained from the Société d’habitation du Québec under the Access to Information Act, at the end of September there remained 5,150 dwellings to be delivered. If we take this delay into account, it is nearly 17,000 housing units that the Legault government will have to bring out of the ground by 2026.
Within the new firm, the housing portfolio now has its own incumbent, France-Élaine Duranceau. She comes from the private sector, having served as Vice President at Cushman & Wakefield, an international commercial real estate advisory firm. In an interview at Homework, she said — unsurprisingly — that she wanted the private sector to contribute in terms of affordable housing. The Minister responsible remained vague, however, on the means she intends to take to square the circle: to reconcile the search for maximum profit and affordable housing in a market where private developers are busy providing houses and condos to affluent young professionals. It will also have to worry about access to property for families that are often poorly served by the rental market.
As Minister responsible for Housing, France-Élaine Duranceau may wish to examine the depreciation scales imposed on owners by the Administrative Housing Tribunal for major renovations. But above all, it will have to look into respect for the rights of tenants evicted from their homes in an abusive manner. It should also consider the creation of a rent register in order to regulate the obligation imposed on the landlord to disclose to the new tenant the rent previously paid. Because to solve the housing crisis, it is not only a question of increasing the number of new units that the private developers put on the market.