Soaring rents and the scarcity of available housing are causing concern in Montreal’s east end, where expectations are high for the revitalization of this sector, which is faced with a lack of green spaces and a significant amount of contaminated land.
“People are forced to pay more for their rent, so they have no choice but to cut food,” Angus Development Corporation president and CEO Christian Yaccarini said on Friday. part of a strategic forum on real estate organized by the East Montreal Chamber of Commerce.
In front of a packed house in Anjou, he then claimed to have seen a 45% increase in requests at the Chic Resto Pop food bank, located in the Hochelaga-Maisonneuve district. A situation he attributed to the soaring rents in eastern Montreal. “There is a strategy to be done to stop this critical increase in rents,” he insisted.
According to data from the Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation (CMHC), the rental housing vacancy rate fell last year to 0.4% in the boroughs of Anjou and Saint-Léonard, while only 1% of apartments were available for rent in Pointe-aux-Trembles as well as in the related city of Montreal East. The average rent, for its part, rose by an average of $145 last year in the Anjou and Saint-Léonard sectors, to reach $938.
“The canary in the mine right now is that we are reducing the pace of construction starts when it should be doubled,” argued the president and CEO of the Urban Development Institute of Quebec. , Jean-Marc Fournier. The latter was referring to a CMHC report published Thursday showing a significant drop in housing starts last year. A trend that should continue this year, sees the federal agency.
Social housing
Present at this forum alongside Mr. Fournier, the general manager of Bâtir son quartier, Édit Cyr, nevertheless warned that rental construction in the east of Montreal should not be done by failing to take into account the needs in terms of social housing in this sector, in a context where the possible arrival of a structuring mode of public transport – formerly called “REM de l’Est” – could create “pressure on the price of land”.
“We must already ensure that there is a mix and that the resident and less well-off populations can also benefit from this development,” argued Ms. Cyr. About twenty activists also demonstrated Friday morning in front of the Metropolitan Golf Club of Anjou, where this forum was taking place, to challenge Quebec on the importance of financing more the construction of social housing in the metropolis. They also wanted to denounce the announced end of the AccèsLogis program, which has been replaced by the Quebec Affordable Housing Program (PHAQ), which is not unanimous.
“It’s a shame”, then launched a demonstrator who came to interrupt the speech of the Minister of Housing, France-Élaine Duranceau, at the end of the morning. The elected official, for her part, assured that the Legault government intends to tackle the housing crisis raging in the east of Montreal, in particular by facilitating the acquisition of housing buildings there in order to get them out “of the logic of private profit.
As for the end of AccèsLogis, the minister argued that this program, which had been financing the construction of social housing in Quebec since 1997, no longer met “current needs”, particularly in Montreal. The PHAQ, for its part, will be subject to modifications “in the coming weeks” in order to be improved, affirmed Ms. Duranceau, without wanting to make an “announcement” in this sense on Friday.
One thing is certain, there is great interest in this program, which has received more grant applications than the Legault government had anticipated, said the minister on the sidelines of this forum. The Minister is also optimistic that the requirements set out in this program will contribute to accelerating the construction of affordable housing in Quebec.
“After 12 months, you have to give your contract to the contractor. So by the definition of the program, things should go faster,” she claimed.
The Minister also expressed concern about the “sometimes astronomical” costs that must be paid for each “door” in social housing projects. A situation she wants to tackle. “It’s all of our money that is used to finance these projects, so I think we have a responsibility that it comes out at a reasonable price. »