The six popular education centers (CEP) in Montreal that were threatened with closure due to drastic rent increases are granted a one-year reprieve. In extremis, the Ministry of Education granted them a grant of $620,000 corresponding to the increase in the annual cost of the premises of these community groups.
These neighborhood organizations, which play a leading educational role, breathed a sigh of relief. “It was one to midnight,” says the coordinator of the Centre-Sud Social Committee, Marie-Josée Desrosiers.
For this CEP, this increase in rent, to which are added building operating costs, represented a 120% increase in its annual expenses. Mme Desrosiers indicates that this financial burden, “unsustainable in the long term”, would have led to the organization’s downfall and would have dragged many of its members down with it.
The Center de services scolaire de Montréal, which owns the buildings, rented the premises to them for years for the symbolic sum of one dollar. Under financial pressure, he then imposed rents closer to market value from 2017. These 15-year leases, with a suspension of payment for the first five years, came into full effect. Friday 1er July 2022.
Met during a demonstration held on June 30, members of the Social Committee spoke of the CEP as a “family place” that “breaks isolation”. The voices of Lucien, Maria and the two Sylvies, who have been going to the center for years, even decades, all agree: “we thrive at the center”, “it allows people with little money to have access to educational services and workshops.
An imposed lease
In the common room of the popular education center in Pointe-Saint-Charles, about twenty people confer. A question is on everyone’s lips: what about the sustainability of financing for rent? The concern is shared, because it is the very survival of the CEP that will be at stake next year. And even if they are funded this year, housing costs represent 21% of the organization’s budget.
“We already have trouble reaching people in the neighborhood who live in poverty. Carrefour employees are paid $20 an hour. Our computers are old… It’s not our priority to pay for a building explains Nicolas Delisle-L’Heureux.
The coordinator of the Carrefour denounces the fact that this lease was imposed on the CEPs. “We were told: ‘If you don’t sign this lease before January 2018, you will be evicted in May'”, he cries. The six centers nevertheless enjoyed a reprieve until 1er July this year.
Mme Desrosiers, for his part, believes that the new government subsidy is a snake biting its own tail. “The CSSDM budget depends on the Ministry of Education, and it is this same ministry that subsidizes our rents,” she explains. Then ironically: “Yes, it’s circular economy! »