Following the moving period of 1er July, 1,667 Quebec households are still homeless or at risk of becoming homeless in the coming weeks, including 204 in Montreal. A situation that can only be resolved by building more social housing, according to activists.
“There are apartments for rent, but a three-and-a-half in Griffintown at $2,500 does not correspond to the ability of renter households to pay, whose median income is $24,000 per year,” denounces the spokesperson for the Front d’action populaire en réaménagement urbain (FRAPRU), Véronique Laflamme, who presented her assessment of the consequences of the housing crisis on Thursday.
According to data collected by FRAPRU from the Société d’habitation du Québec (SHQ), the crisis is affecting all regions.
Among households that lost their homes on the 1ster July without having found a new one, some are staying in hotels. This is the case for 39 Montreal households, 21 in Mauricie, 15 in Quebec, 15 in Montérégie and 14 in Estrie, in particular.
The other affected families are staying with relatives or still have a lease, which ends in the coming months.
“The figures are even more striking given that far fewer tenants have moved this year,” Mr.me Laflamme. In five years, the turnover rate [les ménages qui changent d’appartement] in Quebec fell from 18.6% to 10.4%, according to data from the Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation (CMHC).
Evictions on the rise
Since the beginning of the year, 9,519 tenant households have had to call on a housing search assistance service, for fear of not finding anything. A quarter of them had to relocate because they were victims of eviction.
FRAPRU denounces “the vicious circle of insufficient budget announcements each year.” According to the group, the Quebec government must aim to build at least 10,000 social and community housing units per year, over 15 years, so that the share occupied by social housing in the rental stock reaches at least 20%.
In particular, FRAPRU hopes to establish a public housing program of the HLM type and a Quebec program for the acquisition of private rental housing to remove it from the speculative market.
“The Affordable Housing Program in Quebec (PHAQ) is not sufficient in itself and seems to have been designed for the private sector, and not to create social housing. It is not, in fact, adapted to allow the development of non-profit projects supported by communities,” insists Véronique Laflamme.
“To prevent tenants from being uprooted from their neighborhoods and to prevent each 1er “July does not further weaken communities, so that tenants stop compromising their well-being for the benefit of real estate investors, the alternative of social housing must become widespread,” she concludes.
There are also calls for improvements to the rental support program (PSL), which allows tenants to pay only 25% of their income, a ban on short-term rentals such as Airbnb, a tax on vacant housing, control of evictions and repossessions of housing by the Administrative Housing Tribunal (TAL) and an end to penalties for social assistance recipients who live in shared accommodation and the abolition of clause F in leases, which allows rent increases without justification in buildings less than five years old.