The City of Montreal must urge the Government of Quebec to impose a one-year moratorium on the conversion of private seniors’ residences (RPA) into other types of rental housing in Montreal, while measures are put in place will protect this type of housing in the long term, claims the official opposition at City Hall.
The party will present a motion to this effect during the municipal council meeting on August 22, the first since the end of the summer holidays for elected municipal officials. The document, of which The duty obtained an embargoed copy, reports eight RPA conversions and closures in 2021 on the island of Montreal. There are currently just over 190 RPAs in the metropolis that house more than 26,000 seniors.
“But we hope more that the government will act now, because we know that the housing crisis affects everyone and it particularly affects the category of elderly people who live this situation with a certain precariousness”, notes the head of Together Montreal and author of this motion, Aref Salem.
The motion also recalls that other RPAs, such as Mont-Carmel located in downtown Montreal, are currently threatened with changing their vocation. They would then lose the services for seniors that are currently offered there — such as access to a nurse or a panic button in the rooms. These residences can then be transformed into traditional rental buildings, often with a rent increase.
A situation “which forces seniors in need of care to move and turn to renting vacant housing at a higher price,” deplores the motion by Ensemble Montréal.
“It is a category of people who experience a certain vulnerability and who are thrown outright, indignantly Mr. Salem, in an interview with the To have to Saturday.
However, seniors occupy an increasingly large part of the Montreal population. According to the most recent forecasts from the Institut de la statistique du Québec, people aged 65 and over should represent 21% of the population of the metropolis in 2041, compared to 17% last year. The elderly are also among those who suffer the most from the rapid rise in the cost of living in the province and from the “growth in the price of real estate”, evokes the opposition party.
Moratorium
The opposition party is thus calling for a one-year moratorium on conversions and changes of assignment of RPA on Montreal territory; a measure that would be put in place by Quebec. During this period, Ensemble Montréal would like the Legault government to “accelerate” its reflection begun last spring concerning the overhaul of the certification of RPA “with a view to protecting the rental stock for seniors and the viability of these establishments”.
The party also wants “strict criteria” to be established by Quebec regarding requests for withdrawal of RPA certification in order to prevent them from being granted too easily to promoters.
Reached on Saturday by The duty, the president of the Quebec Association for the Defense of the Rights of Retired and Pre-Retired Persons, Pierre Lynch, says he welcomes these recommendations, which come a few weeks before the start of the next provincial election campaign. He doubts, however, that the Legault government is attentive to the requests of Ensemble Montreal.
“In all the initiatives that we have done on RPA, I have not seen much provincial will to act now,” he says. However, the closure of private residences for seniors who offered affordable rents to their tenants has major impacts on them, both on their finances and on their health, worries Mr. Lynch.
The office of the mayoress of Montreal, Valérie Plante, assures for its part that “the situation of seniors in Montreal is a priority” of its administration, which wishes in particular to ensure that affordable housing is available for them. However, the cabinet wishes to wait until the motion is debated at the next meeting of the municipal council before commenting on it.