The problem with the houses | Press

Looking at overpriced houses on Centris is one of my pleasures.

I have a morbid fascination with the 39-room cabins, Monster houses cheeky with their average of three bedrooms per family member. Who lives in these McMansions to several millions, in these modern cages or with ostentatious turrets in the eight figures? How many rooms of these houses are actually used? I perceive in it spread indecency and moral despair. And a lot of loneliness.

The houses touch us. Talk about us. They build our memories, shelter our joys, our loves, our families.

Our lodgings, apartments, bungalows, our small condos, speak of desires, witness our worries or our isolation, host secret dramas and superb parties. They experienced confinement, homework, sets botched for zooms. They are refuges, cocoons. It’s no stranger to the fact that the vision of homelessness upsets us so much. The idea of ​​being homeless is disturbing, not buried so deeply in us. The welcoming roof is however a variable concept. Our parents or our grandparents lived eight or nine in a 5 ½ while we get on our nerves with two in 1200 ft². Everything is relative, and a question of time.

Ours is marked by a housing crisis and real estate overheating. Not only is the housing stock stagnant, but also the average price of houses has quadrupled in Montreal since the 2000s, and is soaring everywhere in Quebec. A serious issue of intergenerational equity arises: the access of the youngest to real estate is much more difficult than it was for the boomers. So we move further and further on the territory to access our real estate dream, with the social, environmental, psychological price that comes with it.

The issue of the housing crisis is so hot that it has been invited into recent electoral campaigns, both municipal – even in small municipalities – and federal, with its arsenal of partial solutions: social housing, housing co-ops , urban densification to the suburbs. All this leaves a feeling of ineffectiveness and disarray, because the crisis also touches a deep feeling: how do we want to inhabit our space? The issue of housing and land will be crucial in the coming years. Because urban sprawl, the expansion of suburbs to agricultural land are problematic. It is about the acceleration of climate change, the loss of natural habitats. Many believe that our homes will have to be denser to save the planet. But at the same time, the legitimate dream of the single-family home is embedded in our DNA as North Americans, as conquerors of the great outdoors. Even in the city, we aspire to individual courtship. Our homes are our refuges, I repeat. Our relationship to them is complex and emotional, anything but rational and logical.

Our homes are the extension of our privacy, of our social projection. The real estate crisis is embodied in concrete, but also raises feelings. This is why it will be difficult to dissolve.

How will we live in 15, 20 years? What concerns will need to be addressed? We are just beginning to realize that our semi-basement or our Victorian mansion has an impact on our ecological footprint, but also on our health and our emotions; confinement taught us that. Our choice of house is not innocent or without repercussions on society. There has always been an inequality of opportunity, which can be seen in the type of housing, in contrasting neighborhoods. Apartments are social and economic markers. Today, there is the environmental issue. I predict a profound change in the way we live. In a generation or two, we will look at oversized mansions with suspicion. They will be symbols of energetic gluttony, environmental selfishness and oversized egos.

My passion for Centris has changed. It is no longer a matter of voyeurism, but more and more, of environmental awareness. The reason, hopefully, will trigger real estate insolence …

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