A project of a hundred Aboriginal housing units in Verdun is slow to see the light of day due to funding challenges, at a time when members of these communities are finding it increasingly difficult to find housing in the metropolis, in particular because of the discrimination that ‘they undergo.
In 2014, the borough targeted three vacant lots, located near the Verdun hospital, in order to devote them to social housing projects. Native Montreal then raised its hand and proposed to build on two of these lots a complex of one hundred housing units for Native people which would also offer various community services to meet their needs.
The project has since received seed funding from the federal government. Infrastructure Canada also assured by email that it intends to continue “to work closely with the stakeholders involved in this project” in order to meet the housing needs of Aboriginal communities in Montreal.
Native Montreal, which is working on this project with the technical resource group Bâtir son quartier, is however apprehensive about the hefty bill that will entail the decontamination of the lots in question, estimated at $20 million.
“This is the only part on which I want to have an intervention from the City because otherwise, it will be on my shoulders and I cannot carry that”, drops the general manager of Native Montreal, Philippe Meilleur. The latter will also meet next week the mayor of Verdun, Marie-Andrée Mauger, to discuss the progress of this project, the total bill for which would rise to 69 million.
“The project is supported politically, but there are major challenges,” acknowledges the borough mayor, who assures the Duty that this project has not fallen “into oblivion”.
However, the borough has only managed to accumulate in recent years about $500,000 through contributions from real estate developers under the city’s former inclusion strategy. “We can allocate this fund to the creation of units, but we will need the help of higher orders [de gouvernement pour réaliser ce projet]that’s for sure, “raises the elected representative of Projet Montréal.
However, “we are still experiencing this uncertainty of whether we will have funding from Quebec or not” for this initiative, confides to the Duty Charles Guindon, who is a development agent for Bâtir son quartier.
By e-mail, the office of the Minister of Municipal Affairs and Housing, Andrée Laforest, recalls that the City of Montreal “is autonomous in housing and has received 503 million [depuis 2018] to give life to housing projects”, among others through the AccèsLogis program. Funding for the Aboriginal Montreal project therefore falls to the City, says in writing a press officer for the firm, Bénédicte Trottier Lavoie.
“I think that this project, because of the complexity of the realization, because these are highly contaminated soils and large batches, it will be excessively long, but we must succeed in carrying it out in a few years, that’s is clear,” underlines Mayor Mauger, who notes that housing needs for Aboriginal people are “glaring” in the metropolis.
Discrimination and the housing crisis (to be placed before the last heading)
Between 2006 and 2016, the number of Indigenous people in Montreal increased by 55% to reach 13,100 individuals. They are also overrepresented among the homeless in the metropolis in addition to being proportionally more likely to occupy housing in poor condition, according to research published in February 2020 by Montreal Public Health.
However, the housing crisis seems to have exacerbated the barriers faced by Aboriginal people in their search for stable housing. Since 2015, the Chez Doris organization, for example, has managed to house 80 Indigenous women and 55 children in very precarious situations.
However, “there is a lot of return to homelessness among the Aboriginal community,” says the general manager of Chez Doris, Marina Boulos-Winton. A situation that is not unrelated to the discrimination suffered by indigenous people in the search for affordable housing, she believes.
“It is very difficult for women [autochtones] to have a good relationship with their landlord and to prove that they can pay their monthly rent,” points out Maria Paredes, who works for the organization Chez Doris in financial management with Aboriginal women. Intrusive questions, rent that climbs at the last minute: landlords multiply the means to discourage Aboriginals from signing a lease, she laments. And this is felt even more when the real estate market is bubbling, she notes.
“Landlords now have queues of tenants interested in their housing,” said the speaker. If we have an indigenous person and a non-indigenous person [qui veulent occuper un logement], the latter will be chosen. »
However, few Aboriginal people file complaints when they experience discrimination related to access to housing. In fact, the Commission des droits de la personne et des droits de la jeunesse (CDPDJ) has only opened one such case since 2017.
“It’s really the tip of the iceberg because the low number of complaints of discrimination to the Commission in terms of access to housing is not representative of the reality. It’s really a drop in the ocean,” said CDPDJ vice-president Myrlande Pierre.
Tailored solutions
In order to avoid the discrimination suffered by Aboriginal people in the search for housing, the Regroupement des centers d’intérieurs du Québec (RCAAQ) also raises the importance of financing a large number of housing projects managed by and for this community, as proposed by Native Montreal. This could, for example, be done via the AccèsLogis program.
“In urban areas, it is up to Aboriginal people to manage these housing programs there and the way the funds will be managed,” insists RCAAQ public relations director Armand Mackenzie. The group is also leading several housing projects, notably in Sept-Îles, Trois-Rivières and Quebec City, in order to meet the needs of Aboriginal students, among other things.
“There are plenty of promoters who are trying to move these projects forward, but it is the bureaucracy and the political reality that complicate these projects”, sighs for his part Philippe Meilleur, who says however that he still has confidence in concretizing the initiative which animates it in Verdun.