Nurses in the regions will soon be housed in modular units in order to deal with the shortage of housing which is hampering the recruitment of personnel in the health network.
Minister Eric Girard’s budget, unveiled recently, provides for an investment of $5 million to purchase and install 20 modular units intended to house health care employees.
Quebec specifies that these are not “trailers”. “These are housing modules that can be based on a metal structure or even prefabricated wooden modules in the factory,” writes the office of the Minister responsible for Housing, France-Élaine Duranceau.
Photo Stevens LeBlanc
France-Élaine Duranceau, Minister responsible for Housing.
These facilities will be able to accommodate a family of four and will be flexible to meet specific needs.
The concept recalls the recent announcement of 43 future CPEs which will be installed in prefabricated buildings, but also the classes installed for several years in temporary trailers.
homeless employees
This pilot project will make it possible “to quickly offer, in a few months, housing to workers and their families […] “, we explain in Quebec.
The Legault government will thus follow the example of Nova Scotia, which announced in January an investment of $8 million for a similar project.
The housing shortage is hurting the health network in the regions. The newspaper reported, at the beginning of March, that the arrival in Gaspésie of about fifty nurses from abroad had to be postponed, for lack of available places.
These reinforcements from Morocco, Côte d’Ivoire, Benin and Algeria, sometimes with their families, were to come and lend a hand to the region, which would need about 100 additional nurses.
Across Quebec, the Legault government said last year that it wanted to recruit a thousand nurses from abroad to fill positions in the regions.
It has not been possible to know where these first modular units will be deployed.
In large scale ?
If this new approach is a success, Quebec plans to multiply this concept of tiny houses for nurses.
“Through the pilot project, the SHQ [NDLR : Société d’habitation du Québec] will be able to evaluate this option, its social acceptability and the response of the workers before choosing a solution on a larger scale to meet all the needs,” says Ms. Duranceau’s firm.