Previously seen as an affordable alternative, the North Shore in the Montreal area is now more expensive than the city for families. In Laval and the Laurentians, the monthly rents for apartments with three bedrooms or more are ten dollars higher than those located on the island, reveals an analysis of advertisements published on Kijiji by The duty. A phenomenon that reduces accessibility to housing for some tenants still without options as the 1er July.
“The date of the move is coming quickly, it’s scary. Since April, Suzanne Jubinville has been looking for an apartment for her daughter, her husband and herself. The house they rented in Boisbriand has been bought by new owners, who will occupy it as of Friday.
“We still haven’t found anything after a dozen visits,” she laments. Apartments are expensive and I have a small dog, a shih tzu, so it’s even more difficult. »
Boisbriand, Sainte-Thérèse, Saint-Eustache… and even Saint-Jérôme. The family has expanded its search area, but the distance is problematic; Suzanne is followed at Saint-Eustache hospital for her breast cancer. The couple had to return their car to the dealership this spring because they couldn’t afford the few hundred dollars in monthly rental.
Their budget of $1,200, to which their 25-year-old daughter, who works for minimum wage, will contribute, hardly allows them to afford a three-bedroom apartment. In the MRC of Sainte-Thérèse-de-Blainville, the average price of 5 ½ apartments is $1924, according to the analysis of the To have to. Even 4 ½ apartments, which the family is currently looking for, are beyond their budget, at $1,375 on average in the MRC.
“I’m not asking for a castle!” I just want an apartment that is decent,” says the mother, who paid “around $800” two years earlier. The municipality of Sainte-Thérèse sent her to low-rent housing (HLM), but her household is not eligible, given the three combined incomes. And on the side of Boisbriand, she still has not managed to speak to an agent: “The voicemail is always full! »
below balance
Suzanne is indeed not alone in facing this dizzying price increase; Faced with an overpriced real estate market, many families have turned to renting in the past three years, according to Louis Gaudreau, professor at the School of Social Work at the University of Quebec in Montreal (UQAM), causing vacancy rates to melt across the province.
“It’s the law of supply and demand,” explains Mr. Gaudreau. When more people are looking for housing and housing is scarce, landlords have the advantage. They can therefore select the highest bidders as tenants. »
According to the CMHC, the vacancy rate for apartments with three bedrooms or more is 2.1% in the greater Montreal area, well below the balanced 3%. But in the suburbs of the metropolis, more particularly, it is even worse: the rate is always below 1%, sometimes even approaching 0%.
This is one of the reasons behind these staggering prices. In the research area of Suzanne Jubinville and her family, apartments with three bedrooms and more saw their rents increase by 34% between October 2018 and 2021 (Boisbriand/Blainville/Sainte-Thérèse), by 22% in Saint-Eustache/ Mirabel/Oka and 16% in Saint-Jérôme. Figures that far exceed inflation.
Among the most surprising municipalities, because historically affordable for families on the North Shore, we find Bois-des-Filion, with average posted rents of $2,143, Mirabel, at $1,926, Boisbriand, at $1,840 and Sainte- Therese, at $1,524.
Even on the South Shore in the Montreal region, the average rent for a 5 ½ and more exceeds $2,000 in cities like Candiac ($2,197) and Vaudreuil-Dorion ($2,162).
Louis Gaudreau also argues that a dwelling with three bedrooms or more does not necessarily take the same form in the suburbs, where there are more single-family or row houses, which justifies a higher price. “When you leave Montreal and look for large apartments, there is a greater chance that you will find houses for rent,” says the expert. The data compiled by The duty seem to support this hypothesis: in the Laurentians, a third of the advertisements for accommodation with at least three bedrooms on Kijiji included the word “house”, compared to less than 4% for those in Montreal.
Finally, the expert evokes two other hypotheses to explain these high rents. Since the real estate market has become explosive over the past two years, some new owners are trying to make their investment profitable by increasing the rents of their tenants. In addition, “as soon as rent increases become widespread on the island of Montreal, landlords in nearby regions also increase rents,” he adds.
Citizen initiative
Beyond the construction of new homes, among the medium-term solutions mentioned are greater access to housing assistance programs, such as low-income housing (HLM) or the Allocation-Logement initiative, which is currently only intended for low-income families and people aged 50 and over. Experts have also mentioned To have to that a better application of the Civil Code, which provides several measures to protect the rights of tenants, would improve the situation.
I’m not asking for a castle! I just want an apartment that’s okay.
But in Rosemère, citizens have decided to take the bull by the horns. They are more than a dozen to have met to found the first multigenerational housing cooperative in the municipality. “We saw that many seniors no longer had the means to stay in Rosemère, but once they reach a certain age, it becomes very stressful to take people out of their environment,” explains one of the founders, Véronique Pierre.
She took a course with the Federation of Housing Cooperatives of Metropolitan Montreal, and since then, information meetings, the recruitment of volunteers and meetings with the authorities follow one another. Even if she considers that the project is at the “1 out of 10” stage, she believes she will be able to provide a roof for some thirty households within five years.
“A young mother recently told me that if she divorced, she could no longer stay in Rosemère. I feel enormous relief from the population when they learn that [la coopérative] is an option, if ever,” says the citizen.