On a quiet summer Monday, I was unconscious enough to relay on Facebook a reflection on loneliness attributed to the actor Jim Carrey: “Loneliness is dangerous and very addictive! It becomes a habit after realizing how quiet and peaceful it is. » Wars do not start any other way. Take out the drones. 70 comments later, it’s a trial on #people who have the nerve to occupy an apartment alone. The housing crisis is heating up minds. We search for culprits by clicking frantically.
Immigrants are a prime target. According to a recent Environics survey, 4 out of 10 Canadians — an increase of 17% in one year — find that there is too much immigration in a country where, traditionally, we lack more history than geography and borders. And this opinion is directly linked to the housing crisis. Either.
The next survey will focus on the 19% of people who live alone in Quebec. You will be accused of being single, divorced or a forgotten old widow. You could group together in the same King (or Queen if you’re a feminist) bed to alleviate your space obesity.
Every time we refuse 1 billion for housing, 10 billion are prepared for courts, prisons, insane asylums
What about shared custody where children’s beds are left empty every other week? Not to mention a bedroom for each child, a rather recent norm in human history. It reminds me that I shared a room with my brother until I was ten years old and that no one called the DPJ.
We could also mention that #people who have more than 1.49 children contribute in the long run to the housing problem unless we warn them that Tanguys have become very trendy again.
We could also accuse #people of not welcoming their elderly parents into their homes, as was done in the days when women “did not work”. Or park these same old people who are a little senile (or not) in a CHSLD room for eight people without a bathroom, as was seen in Saint-Adèle this fall.
There is no shortage of culprits and solutions when you get started.
Densify and stack
You just need to be creative to find the 860,000 housing units (up to 1.1 million, depending on the migratory flow according to the Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation) that are missing in Quebec by 2030… or six years . We must also count on a shortage of 6,500 construction workers, a detail. Bringing in Mexicans to build condo towers or pick strawberries doesn’t require the same qualifications.
Let’s do like in Russia, you tell me: one family per room, a stove ring each and a bathroom for all. Or maybe we rotate between the apartments free of snowbirds in winter and empty chalets in summer. We can also consider the RV parked in the yard, life in vanthe SUV, the shed, the garage, the couch surfing where the woofing. And the idea of housing students for free in RPAs in exchange for volunteering is downright promising. Elderly roommates are grouping together more and more, unable to face the exorbitant cost of rent with their meager pensions. Not to mention the “ pods », dormitories more expensive than a youth hostel in the city center, Japanese style.
Municipalities may have to allow their residents to use their imagination, to install tiny houses on their single-family lots in order to enlarge the “family”, to outright ban Airbnbs as was done for foreign investors (only for two years) in real estate matters. And tax second homes even more, because the crisis also affects our countryside. Don’t scream, Québec Solidaire is not in power.
[…] one wonders if the population in the guerrilla war which opposes private property, speculation and big money has not given up, too stunned by the eviction letters or the rent increases […]
I appreciated the biting tone of the recent novel May our joy remain by Kevin Lambert facing the excesses of real estate capitalism. That said, I put the book down twice. The 14-line Proustian sentences lost me. It’s hard to feel affection for people whose only problems are lending their private planes, covering up scandals, and shaking good hands while getting depressed in their 30-room, 11,000-square-foot apartments downtown in the Golden Square Mile… (I just found one… empty, at 7.76 million). But I digress.
This is true in animals as in humans: the higher your rank, the larger your territorial space. And the higher the residential density, the more psychological disorders set in. Yet loneliness kills us. Extremes are never desirable.
Invest, they said
The problem is multifactorial, as are the solutions. My first 4½ in the heart of the Plateau (at $168/month, 40 years ago) was used to accommodate an entire family 100 years ago. Two double rooms and two tiny wardrobes. The same dwelling now costs $1450, dilapidated, or $2400 renovated “up to date”. But it has become the bare minimum for a single person (or a couple) who works at home. Because white-collar workers are also asked to provide the office for free to their employers.
If the solution to the climate crisis consists of densification, we will have to thoroughly review our criteria for space and build accordingly, as is happening more and more: small condos, shared common spaces, including coworking and leisure. . Faced with soaring house prices, future buyers are turning to these condos.
Other times, other customs, my grandfather told me that he shared the bed with another man during the crisis of 1929, when he arrived in Montreal, in the Gaspésiens district. Alban, 20 years old, occupied the bed at night; the other, during the day. My grandfather bragged about sleeping with his roommate’s wife, but not touching her. Every Gaspésie hosts a storyteller and a fisherman.
At the same time, you could “sleep on the clothesline”. For 5 sous, ropes were stretched in dormitories and the men seated on benches snored leaning on the rope which was removed in the morning. It was the stage before the street, hence the expression (https://bit.ly/3R0XgSI).
Hard to believe, less than 100 years later, when we have made access to property the ultimate symbol of social success. By speculating about our homes, we created this crisis from scratch, forgetting the roof.