Despite the billions of dollars invested over time in the construction of social housing, Quebec is facing a traffic jam. More than 675 rental apartments planned in the AccèsLogis program have been waiting for at least five years to come out of the ground, noted The duty.
This represents 15% of housing development funded by AccèsLogis, the community and affordable housing construction program launched by Quebec in the late 1990s, which the government of François Legault intends to soon abandon.
According to the calculations of Dutyno less than 18 social and affordable housing projects have still not been grounded at least five years after being analyzed for the first time by the Société d’habitation du Québec (SHQ), the organization that administers AccèsLogis.
Most are in Montreal (six), but Montérégie (three) and the Laurentians (three) have their share of pending construction. Two projects, in Montreal and Mont-Laurier, are more than 10 years old.
If we exclude housing projects for women in difficulty – the SHQ excludes them from its calculations – nearly 4,500 housing units are on hold in Quebec. Some 2,600 more are under construction.
Since the beginnings of AccèsLogis, the various levels of government have invested more than seven billion dollars to build new housing. However, the rise in construction costs and materials is hitting harder than ever, notes the director of the Municipal Housing Office of Longueuil, Catherine Carré.
Since 2016, its teams have been working on a 36-unit project called Saint-Roch – phase II, but it is slow to come to fruition. “There was some time trying to find additional financing, because unfortunately the construction costs were far too high compared to the money allocated to us,” she says at the other end of the thread.
The shortfall, with the explosion of construction costs and production costs, the SHQ and the government are trying to [le] to counter.
The Abitibi-Témiscamingue–Ungava Technical Resource Group has been working for seven and a half years on Le Centurion, a 24-door project located in Amos. Except that “before the pandemic, the most expensive projects in AccèsLogis [lui] cost about $185 per square foot. “Now, for the Le Centurion project, it’s sold at $385, so $200 per square foot more,” says the main project manager.
According to the Director General of the Association of Technical Resource Groups of Quebec (AGRTQ), Éric Cimon, it takes about three years to complete a social and affordable housing project. But his organization, which represents some twenty groups dedicated to the development of community housing in Quebec, has been sounding the alarm for years: “The main factor is the lack of funding. »
“The shortfall, with the explosion of construction costs and implementation costs, the SHQ and the government are trying to [le] counter, he agrees. The thing is, they decide that somewhere in December, they vote on the budget in March, and then the money is available somewhere in September. This means that there is another 7-8% which has been added in the meantime, and we end up with a project which is not yet viable. »
New program
Since 2018, the government of François Legault has mainly invested in the construction of AccèsLogis apartments “unrealized” during previous mandates. “There is money that has been available, I would even say for years, and then we can’t spend,” said the Prime Minister earlier this year at the Blue Room.
If he salutes the sums devoted to housing in the various budgets of the Minister of Finance, Eric Girard, Mr. Cimon notes that the investments have only arrived in dribs and drabs. “We have calculated that, if they had put the money in from the start, they would have saved more than 300 million”, indicates the CEO of the AGRTQ.
“If there is a lack of schools or if there is a lack of hospitals, we are not saying that we are going to stop building. We put it [l’argent], we know that it is an essential good, he continues. Housing is the same thing. »
At the beginning of the year, dissatisfied with the performance of AccèsLogis, the Legault government officially announced the scrapping of the program, more than 25 years after its birth.
To replace it, Quebec is relying on the Quebec Affordable Housing Program (PHAQ). This new affordable housing financing tool modifies the criteria imposed on organizations wishing to embark on the construction of affordable housing, in addition to opening the door to private companies wishing to invest.
“It was taking shape, it was foreseeable,” laments the co-spokesperson of the Regroupement des committees logement et associations de tenants du Québec, Cédric Dussault, who fears for the financing of social housing in Quebec with the arrival of the PHAQ. “It’s really an ideological position of the [Coalition avenir Québec], who wants to go private. »
In its last budget, the government reserved one-third of the new PHAQ housing for the private sector. Before abandoning AccèsLogis, however, he promises to bring out of the ground most of the construction planned in the program.
With Isabelle Porter and Dave Noe