Montreal Mayor Denis Coderre will be among the many mayors around the world in Ecuador on Monday for a summit on sustainable urban development, but social housing advocates say his administration needs to do more to address a growing affordable housing emergency here at home.
“There are 25,000 tenants on the waiting list for public housing and many thousands more for co-op or non-profit housing,” said FRAPRU coordinator Francois Saillant. “This is an emergency situation.”
According to the coordinator for the social housing advocacy group, over 100,000 Montreal tenants are spending more than half their monthly income on their rent. Saillant adds that half of them are at risk of living on the streets, as they spend over 80 per cent of their income solely on housing.
Montreal is in the midst of a real-estate development boom, so while there is still land to reserve, Saillant and other advocates say this is the time to carve out space for new social housing.
“The city of Montreal has to do something because these possibilities will escape and we’ll lose these opportunities to condo projects,” he challenged, adding that one idea is to build condo projects that including social housing.
There are lots available to accommodate new projects, Saillant added, including the vacant Blue Bonnets Raceway in Cote-Des-Neiges and the site of the old Montreal Children's Hospital near the Atwater metro.
Real estate brokers are sceptical condo owners would want their home to be attached to low-income housing.
“Very often, the people who will buy the condos will not want to live with social housing,” broker Nathalie Clement admitted. “That’s a syndrome that is universal, unfortunately.”
—with files from CTV Reporter Aalia Adam