Housing crisis increasing homelessness in Montreal
Posted June 23, 2022 9:30 am.
Last Updated June 23, 2022 6:54 pm.
The rising cost of rent, and decreasing number of affordable housing units in Montreal, means it’s even harder for people to get out of homelessness.
“We have statistics from 2011 to 2016. 80,000 units of affordable housing were removed from the market. That’s 18,000 a year, approximately, are no longer accessible to homeless people, and it’s probably doubled since then as well. That’s a really big deal, and we need to do something about it,” says James Hughes, President and CEO of the Old Brewery Mission.
Hughes says investments trusts have taken over the real estate market.
“The result is that low income people now have less real estate to be able to live in. Not everybody who is renovicted for instance, becomes homeless. But even a small percentage of those people who become homeless are now banging on our doors,” he explains.
Hughes says homelessness went up about 4% in 2018, and now he says they estimate homelessness has spiked by over 20%.
“What’s happening in the housing market is absolutely having a very direct effect on our business in homelessness. We want to see homelessness go down. In fact, the opposite is happening.”
READ MORE: Montreal joins forces with real estate partners to address housing crisis
Hughes says we need more affordable housing units built but we also need to preserve the affordable housing that’s left with government regulation. A first step would be putting a freeze on Airbnb units and a cap on rent increases.
“It’s not no new rent increases, but just capping it to make sure that the people who are in those units can preserve it.”
He also suggests converting some of the vacant commercial units in the city to affordable housing.
“We’re seeing vacancies in commercial real estate buildings that we’ve never seen before. So what do we do with that? This is not going to be true for every commercial building with vacancies but many perhaps can be converted to low income residential. Let’s take a little gift from COVID and try to make some new units available.”
