Social housing | Projects on hold for 10 years

Are there really 12,000 social housing units under construction in Quebec at the moment, as the Minister of Housing, France-Élaine Duranceau, said last Monday?

The answer is no, a check reveals The Press. In reality, there are currently 99 social housing projects, representing 4,454 units, “in progress” at various stages, according to data from the Société d’habitation du Québec (SHQ).

There are also 7,655 housing units “in development” in 171 housing projects “which have not yet received confirmation of financial participation from the SHQ,” indicates the government organization.

However, Minister Duranceau added these two data to suggest that there were 12,000 social housing units “under construction”, or “financed” by the government, as she said at another time, at a press conference. in Montreal, in Cartierville, last week.

Questioned on this subject, a spokesperson for the SHQ clarified, by email, that “the minister wanted to mention that there were currently more than 12,000 housing units whose projects are at different stages of completion.”

Ten years of waiting

Among the 7,655 housing units “in development”, for which financing is not assured, some projects have been in the works for as long as eight or ten years and are still waiting for public funds to break ground.

This is the case of the Habitations de Mont-Laurier project, led by the Défi Autonomie cooperative of Antoine-Labelle, which wishes to build 34 housing units for elderly people losing their autonomy. The funding request was submitted in September 2012 to the SHQ, as part of the AccèsLogis program.

The project was initially estimated at 6 million, but the bill is now estimated at 14.5 million.

“We’ve been talking about it for more than 10 years,” says Michel Langevin, general director of the cooperative.

The organization was invited to present its project again, at the beginning of the year, to obtain funding under the Rapid Housing Creation Initiative, federal funds managed by the SHQ. But Mr. Langevin learned a few weeks ago that their project had not been accepted.

“We had discussions with the SHQ which gave us hope, they say they are looking for a way to unblock our project. But it’s very difficult to get financing, he laments. In Mont-Laurier, we don’t have any big companies that could contribute. »

Risk of homelessness

Hope has also returned to the Pavillon Bien-Aimé project, led by the Société d’improvement de Pointe-Saint-Charles in partnership with the organization Rêvanous, which works with people with intellectual disabilities. In the future building of 39 housing units, 10 would be reserved for people with intellectual disabilities.

“We work with very vulnerable people, who risk finding themselves homeless if they no longer have family and are not taken care of,” says Yves Marcotte, president of the board of directors of Rêvanous.

The organization already has a building with 79 housing units, in addition to managing a few units in buildings of the Office municipal d’habitation de Montréal. Its housing waiting list has 140 names, and Rêvanous recently closed it because there is very little chance of new places becoming available quickly.

The Pavillon Bien-Aimé project, now estimated at 11.1 million, has been in the pipeline at the SHQ since 2012. Mr. Marcotte hoped to obtain the necessary financing two years ago, but the government then paid less significant sums than foreseen.

However, if it is built, the building will cost more than expected.

The consequences are likely to be the same for many projects that have been waiting for years. Other examples? The Rose-Main housing cooperative (63 housing units), in Montreal, whose project dates from 2014, the Maison Émilie project, (86 housing units), which dates from 2018, the Convergence Griffintown project (272 housing units), which dates from 2019, the Heritage Housing project of the United Townships of Stoneham-et-Tewkesbury (35 housing units), which dates from 2019.

Doubled costs

“In 2018, the average cost was around $200,000 per door, while now it’s around $400,000. Construction costs have doubled, but not the subsidies,” laments Éric Cimon, general director of the Association of Technical Resource Groups (GRT) of Quebec, organizations that support the community world in the development of social housing.

The AccèsLogis program was designed so that public financing represented 50% of the costs of a project, while the rest could be financed through a mortgage or other sources. But as government subsidies have not been increased, the financial arrangements no longer work, explains Mr. Cimon. “We’re more like 34%,” he observes.

The Minister of Housing says she is tackling the “backlog” of projects submitted to AccèsLogis in recent years, to unlock funding. But the amounts are still insufficient in many cases.

According to Edith Cyr, general director of the GRT Bâtir son district, the priority funded projects are those that can be carried out quickly. But the government should also take into consideration the needs of communities, notes Éric Cimon.