By doubling federal government assistance, Quebec is injecting a total of $1.8 billion more over five years to add 8,000 affordable housing units to the market. It now remains to be seen when they will emerge and when tenants will be able to benefit from them.
Since coming to power, the CAQ has made $3.8 billion in housing announcements. But many projects have been slow to come to fruition and remain theoretical. For example, nearly 4,000 units from the former Accès Logis program are still in “development”, some of which have been for more than ten years.
What will happen to the 8000 announced this week? Despite the difficulties of the past, the Minister of Finance, Eric Girard, expects to see them all achieved by 2028.
“The advantage,” he says, of having a lot of units waiting, is that many “are going to be delivered.” Moreover, he says, “everyone is aligned on this difficulty.”
“If the municipalities increase their efforts, the Quebec and federal governments collaborate well, and we also have help that comes from monetary easing, the conditions are there for there to be this realization there. »
Mr. Girard is in fact counting on two strategies to see them come to fruition: the relaxation of zoning in cities and the new accelerated training in construction.
The latter was presented last week by the Prime Minister himself. If everything goes as planned, between 4,000 and 5,000 new construction workers could be trained by next summer.
More flexible zoning
As for measures affecting cities, they appear in Bill 39 tabled last week by the Minister of Municipal Affairs, Andrée Laforest.
The Minister of Finance wants to “help municipalities accelerate the construction of housing,” we can read in the plan he presented in the economic update. This will involve “more flexibility” to “densify more easily” and reduce construction start-up times.
For example, Bill 39 would allow cities to promote social housing projects by offering them tax holidays. This would involve zoning, since the text would allow them to create new categories of buildings.
Minister Girard also mentions that he wants to “facilitate” the development of what are called accessory dwellings, independent dwellings built as annexes to single-family homes. This measure, which is also provided for in Bill 39, would however have no direct impact on the construction of the new 8,000 units announced in the update.
A plan deemed insufficient
A final chapter of the Quebec government’s highly anticipated housing game plan, however, remains to be announced by the Société d’habitation du Québec (SHQ).
The SHQ, which finances public housing projects, would be called upon to intervene more in the market by acquiring buildings and selling others to NPOs. A plan that Minister France-Élaine Duranceau has been thinking about for some time, but which remains to be announced “soon”, we promise in the update.
Minister Girard also increased the number of low-income tenants eligible for rent supplements (assistance allowing the price of housing on the private market to be limited to 25% of income). This means 4,000 units will be added for a total of $50 million over five years.
Funds available for housing allowance (another type of rental assistance) will also increase by $57 million over the same period.
But all this is insufficient, many pressure groups reacted on Tuesday. The minister is notably criticized for not having offered a QST credit for construction as Ontario did. “It’s good, but the immediate needs remain gigantic throughout Quebec,” lamented the Association of Construction and Housing Professionals of Quebec (APCHQ). A point of view shared by the Urban Development Institute (IDU) which judges that Quebec should not have focused solely on assistance for low-income tenants. “The gap between supply and demand is huge. To hope to achieve this, we will have to work on the supply of all types of housing. »
Questioned on this, Minister Girard replied that a tax credit would have had a “more diffuse” effect than what he proposed. “The aid is direct, all the money goes directly to the construction of housing. »
On the side of Parliament, the oppositions were also skeptical. “Since the CAQ has been in power, we have built only 6,709 social housing units,” underlined PQ leader Paul St-Pierre Plamondon. “We neglected the issue for five years. » For its part, Québec Solidaire pointed out that a large part of the $1.8 billion was only going to be disbursed from 2025. “It is now that we need measures for the housing crisis, we cannot wait until 2025,” responded MP Christine Labrie.