The government of the Coalition avenir Québec is making concrete its use of private companies in the construction of affordable housing. He will entrust them with a third of the 1,500 new rental units announced in the Quebec Budget on Tuesday.
The fiscal year presented to the National Assembly by Quebec’s grand treasurer, Eric Girard, provides for the investment of $60 million in Quebec’s rental stock over the next six years. These funds must be used, according to Quebec, to get out of the ground or to renovate more than 5,000 dwellings. However, of this number, only 1,500 spaces had not been announced previously.
Carrying out these new projects will cost the Quebec government $303.6 million over five years. It is the Quebec Affordable Housing Program that will ensure that they are completed.
In total, therefore, Quebec will finance the construction of 1,500 new dwellings by 2028, “including 500 units” reserved for the private sector. A practice that “scandalizes” the Popular Action Front in Urban Redevelopment (FRAPRU).
It’s subcontracting. […] There is no follow-up, then we have no insurance. We have no guarantee that we will meet the most urgent needs.
“As part of social programs, to entrust money like that [au privé]I’ve never seen that,” protested the organization’s spokesperson, Véronique Laflamme, in an interview with The duty. “It’s outsourcing. […] There is no follow-up, then we have no insurance. We have no guarantee that we will meet the most urgent needs. »
The Minister responsible for Housing, France-Élaine Duranceau, justified this decision during a press scrum on Tuesday. “It will ensure that our risk is limited. The government of Quebec will give a subsidy “X”, then the partner with whom we will work, it will deliver the number of units that it has promised. If there are overruns, that’s his business,” she said.
Finished, AccèsLogis
In an interview with the daily The Press last month, the elected representative of the Coalition avenir Québec (CAQ) confirmed the imminent disappearance of AccèsLogis, the program that has funded the construction of social and community housing in Quebec since 1997, for the benefit of the PHAQ. In his budget on Tuesday, Minister Girard included $191.5 million to “accelerate the construction of 3,300 AccèsLogis units”, but these had already been announced.
According to the Quebec Liberal Party, Girard’s fifth budget “confirms the abandonment [du programme] AccèsLogis and social financing”. According to Québec solidaire, he signs the “death warrant of social housing”. “The government, even if it has recognized that there is a housing crisis, is not making efforts to correct the situation in any way,” said Parti Québécois MP Joël Arseneau on Tuesday.
During the election campaign last summer, the CAQ pledged to build 11,700 new affordable housing units. Asked about this figure on Tuesday, Eric Girard was content to recall that there would be other budgets throughout the mandate.