‘People are forced out’: Parc-Ex residents call for more social housing

Montreal Parc-Extension residents are rallying against the gentrification of the neighbourhood.

They are demanding social housing, days before Quebec presents its economic update.

“We wanted to denounce the housing crisis here today,” said Amy Darwish, a community organizer with a Parc-Extension housing group. “We think the consequences are terrifying.”

Residents want to see 700 Jarry turned into a cooperative to help with the housing crisis.

“(It’s) one of many sites in the neighbourhood that has been sitting empty for lack of funding,” said Darwish. “We’re here to demand that the Quebec government invest immediately in social housing and to do it as soon as possible.”

Providing for all low-income households in greater Montreal would require about 266,000 new subsidized housing units, according to a McKinsey report for Centraide released in May. The Greater Montreal Area has added about 1,400 social housing units a year since 1995.

Advocates say that gap and gentrification are being felt deeply in low-income neighbourhoods like Montreal’s Parc-Extension.

“There are resources here and networks here that help people survive and… you can’t easily find them in other neighbourhoods,” said Darwish. “They can’t be easily replicated. So often what we’re seeing is that when people are forced out, they end up being cut off from their support networks. They end up being isolated from their friends. They end up being cut off from resources.

“And what it means is that people end up living in increasingly isolated and tenuous situations.”

Those difficult situations can have a negative impact on kids, according to a community organizer with FRAPRU.

“We know for fact that children in those families that struggle to pay the rent face a problem in their development. So I think that’s really important to act on,” said Carl Lafreniere.

Salam Hashmi, a resident of Parc-Ex for the last 17 years, says he’s seen rents double and even triple – sometimes with devastating effect.

“Just recently, just this summer, another friend of mine who’s been living here maybe more than me even – 25 years in the neighborhood – he was kicked out,” said Hashmi. “One day he called me, said ‘I’m homeless. I’m on the street. I have my stuff on the street.’ He was literally on the street and he had nowhere to go.”

Darwish feels funding needs to go towards social housing.

“I see that affordable housing is often disguised as social housing and kind of masqueraded as a solution, but it really isn’t,” she said. “It’s not calculated as a percentage of tenants’ revenue, but rather of the market rate. And in most cases, it just ends up being way too expensive for the vast majority of tenants in Parc Ex who are struggling to find a place to live and who are being forced out of the neighbourhood.

“That’s why we think the funding needs to be specifically for social and community housing if it’s actually going to allow people to live in dignified conditions here in the neighbourhood.”