Close to 900 new social and affordable residences announced for Montreal

Article content

The city of Montreal unveiled nine social and affordable housing projects on Friday that will include nearly 900 “off-market” residences protected from rapid rent increases seen in the private market.

The apartments are mainly earmarked for families, couples and singles, with some buildings designated for specific groups, including men or women at risk of homelessness, single mothers and women transitioning from emergency shelters who have trouble finding private market apartments amid rising rental costs.

Article content

Three of the new residences will be located near the Lachine Canal in St-Henri and offer 112 units for women of low or modest incomes, including one 22-unit residence designed for senior lesbians, age 55 and older.

In St-Michel, a new $12-million transition home run by the Old Mission Brewery with 27 units will provide housing for men and women at risk of homelessness, who will receive accompaniment from counsellors.

More than half of the 893 new units announced Friday, which range from studio apartments to four-bedroom accommodations, will be eligible for Quebec’s rent supplement program, in which tenants spend no more than 25 per cent of their income on rent. There are more than 20,000 households on the waiting list for social housing in Montreal, with an average wait time of four years.

Friday’s announcement was held in the lobby of the new Habitation Héritage de Point-St-Charles, an eight-storey, 122-unit building erected on land formerly occupied by CN rail yards.

In a neighbourhood where the average monthly rent for a one-bedroom has risen to $1,400, such projects are sorely needed, said Lucien Banga of SOCAM (Société d’amelioration de Pointe St-Charles), a non-profit real-estate manager that oversees nearly 2,000 co-operative housing units.

Article content

Article content

Historically, however, they can take a long time to come to fruition — SOCAM had been working to construct this latest building since 2004, negotiating with CN and the city to be granted the land, having it decontaminated, creating the plan for the building and then raising the $45 million necessary to build it, primarily from government funds.

Once all that was done, construction took two years.

“With the housing crisis, this is truly really good news, because spaces are very limited to help households with low income,” Banga said. New Quebec directives that require non-profit groups to organize the planning and funding of new projects within a 12-month timeline are helping to speed the process, he said.

Mayor Valérie Plante has pledged to build 120,000 social and affordable housing units over the next 10 years. Only seven per cent of homes in Montreal are social and affordable units, in line with federal averages, Plante said. She wants that number to increase to 20 per cent by 2050, levels that are seen in some cities worldwide.

Much of the problem for community non-profit organizations striving to build affordable housing is getting the funding from the different levels of government and from a variety of programs, Plante noted. Whereas a private firm only has one financial institution to deal with, non-profits generally have to negotiate with several, which can take years, during with time prices rise, forcing them to start all over again.

Article content

“This is a good example of how we have to make processes easier and to have the right amount of money to support those organizations,” Plante said. “I feel this will is present right now from the federal and provincial governments, and the city of Montreal.”

Jean-Pascal Beaudoin, strategic adviser for the Bâtir son quartier community developer, which helped co-ordinate the nine projects, said there appears to be more money available from all levels of government for these type of projects. But the difficulty remains in co-ordinating the funding coming from the different sources.

“There is a lot more on offer,” he said. “But we need to work harder to put it all together.”

The affordable housing units are similar to those on the private market, except they tend to be “denser,” meaning more people are expected to live in a smaller size dwelling than would be expected in the private realm.

The nine housing projects, most of which were recently opened, were created with $340 million in government funding coming from Quebec ($229 million), Canada ($58 million) and Montreal ($53 million). Present at Friday’s announcement were Plante, France-Élaine Duranceau, the Quebec minister responsible for housing, and Mélanie Joly, federal minister of foreign affairs and MP for Ahuntsic-Cartierville, as well as the local community organizations involved.

rbruemmer@postmedia.com

Article content

Article content