Montrealers Vote 2025: How can the next mayor fix the city’s housing crisis?

Finding an affordable place to live in Montreal is getting harder every year.

Even with new construction projects popping up across the city, many homes and apartments remain out of reach.

As Montrealers prepare to elect a new mayor on Nov. 2, housing advocates say it’s time for real action to make the city livable for everyone.

“It’s outrageous, especially based on location. You get a tiny apartment for over $1,000 a month,” said one Montrealer.

Shannon Frassen, interim co-ordinator of the Regroupement des comités logement et associations de locataires du Québec (RCLALQ), said rents have skyrocketed.

“So we’ve seen in Montreal the average rents over the past five years have increased about 70 per cent on average. So that means that a rent that might have been $1,000 a month five years ago is now more like $1,800 a month,” Frassen said.

Catherine Lussier, community organizer with the housing advocacy group FRAPRU, said vacancy rates are misleading.

“We’re looking at Ville-Marie, for example, which is 5.3 per cent. So the vacancy rate is there, but there is nothing that is really affordable. So we’re really passing through an affordability crisis in Montreal,” Lussier said.

With rent climbing and vacancies low, community groups say every level of government has a role to play.

“The frustrating thing that sometimes happens in municipal elections is that candidates will say, ‘Oh well, housing isn’t really a municipal issue. This is for the provincial government, it’s for the federal government, there’s not much we can do.’ Actually, that’s really not true,” said Frassen.

Housing is front and centre in this election campaign, with each party pitching its own plan to tackle the crisis.

• Ensemble Montréal says it wants to accelerate housing construction by cutting red tape and offering financial incentives for affordable and social housing projects. The party is promising to create a city-funded affordability fund and prioritize development on major unused city-owned sites such as Namur–Hippodrome, Lachine Est and Bridge–Bonaventure.
• Projet Montréal wants to launch one of the largest housing initiatives in North America, protecting existing affordable units and expanding social and co-operative housing.
• Transition Montréal plans to create Bâtir Montréal, a new public agency to build and manage affordable housing on city land with non-profit partners. It also wants to establish a rent registry, strengthen tenant protections and use vacancy taxes to fund new affordable housing.
• Action Montréal says it would support co-ops and community housing groups by easing access to city land and cutting permit delays. The party opposes a rent registry, focusing instead on speeding up construction and encouraging citizen-led housing solutions.
• Futur Montréal wants to replace the city’s 20-20-20 rule with a luxury housing levy to fund social and affordable housing. It also proposes converting underused commercial buildings into rental housing.

“Right now, I think that a lot of municipal bylaws are in place that do protect landlords’ rights, and we don’t always see the opposite — that tenants’ rights are being protected,” said Frassen.

Long-time residents say the city they once knew is changing, and affordable housing is getting harder to find.

“I mean, when I came here years back, you could work and have one job, pay rent and still have money left. But indeed, Montreal is becoming just like Toronto. In Toronto, you need two jobs just to pay the rent,” said one resident.

Another added: “For our generation, we were lucky. But for my grandkids, I don’t know what they’re going to do.”