Quebec is experiencing a housing crisis. Low-income households are the hardest hit, particularly because of the lack of social housing and the scarcity of truly affordable housing. But the crisis also affects first-time buyers, many of whom are struggling to accumulate a sufficient down payment without the help of parents. The causes of this crisis are multiple. Examples include the withdrawal of the Canadian government from housing funding social, despite recent support for housing affordablethe disinterest of real estate developers in rental housing, the underfunding of cooperative housing, gentrification and, to a lesser extent, “studentification”, the invasion of short-term rental platforms as well as renovictions.
For the poorest, the production of “non-market” housing is the only viable solution, insofar as personal assistance does not generate lasting affordability and does not in any way ensure the good condition, or even the healthiness, of housing. As for the measures aimed at promoting the production of affordable housing, they are hardly convincing. One explanation is the growing commodification of housing.
If the acquisition of a property imposed itself after the Second World War as a judicious investment to prepare for old age, it has been rather seen, for several years, as an investment from which one expects generous returns more or less shortly. deadlines. The flips properties, the proliferation of real estate investment trusts, renovations and the financialization of large residential projects are all manifestations of an evolution that contributes to the increase in the number of people left behind.
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If the difficulty experienced by many households in finding suitable housing is one of the most visible consequences of this growing commodification of housing, it is not the only consequence, far from it. In The right to the city (1968) the sociologist Henri Lefebvre maintained that the transformation of housing into a market product, which began in the 19e century, compromises living, that is to say the appropriation of a living environment of which housing is certainly a major component, but is not limited to it. In other words, living is reduced to the terms of occupying a dwelling to which access is entirely subject to the dictates of an often ruthless market.
The poorest households, since the neighborhoods they live in are now coveted, are particularly affected. Gentrification in fact operates an erosion of the conditions of possibility of living there, insofar as the residential choices as well as the access to the shops and local services which are intended for them are impoverished. Living is therefore equivalent to safeguarding a right to precarious housing.
The production of soulless neighborhoods also contributes to such an erosion of inhabitability. Griffintown is an example of this insofar as urbanity, which defines the conditions for the possibility of inhabiting it through an open appropriation of the living environment, is reduced to the bare minimum, i.e. what remains after developers have served. Housing projects for the elderly work, for many, in the same way.
There, living there is programmed from the outset by the owner-developers and is reduced, as the advertising suggests, to a series of leisure and relaxation facilities (all included) reserved for the occupants alone. These facilities often take on the appearance of fortified castles closed to the city. The substitute for living there is entirely subordinate to the habitat, that is to say to the market product.
Commercial products such as Airbnb contribute to this withering of living. This is reduced to the “neighborhood” activities of tourists. However, if we praise this formula by arguing that it allows an “authentic” urban experience, it usually generates tensions and conflicts because of the narrowness of the urbanity practiced by these transient occupants, especially when they behave like party animals.
The financialization of major real estate projects amplifies these phenomena since many speculative buyers looking for yield show little interest in living there. The more narrowly the product is defined, the more the risk is controlled. As for the sometimes spectacular architectural gesture, it plays the role of a prospectus intended for buyers. The architecture is dedicated to making the product look good, by praising the neighborhood which is essentially a stooge.
The surroundings of the Bell Center belong to this universe. That the district is, at the limit, uninhabited, and therefore that living there is severely reduced to negligible quantity, matters little. Housing is a financial product intended to produce a return on investment.
This impoverishment of living is not without consequences. Perhaps this should be seen as a partial explanation for the resistance to the densification injunction observed in a good number of neighborhoods abandoned to real estate developers? Beyond the right to a roof, it is the claim of a shared urbanity and the richness of a dwelling that is in question here.
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A previous version of this text mentioned that one of the authors of this text was Gérard Beaud when it is Gérard Beaudet.