Hundreds march on Nun’s Island to denounce Quebec’s handling of housing crisis

Hundreds of housing activists gathered on Nun’s Island Saturday afternoon, calling on the Legault government to take stronger action on Quebec’s housing crisis.

Organized by the Front d’action populaire en réaménagement urbain (FRAPRU), activists said the protest aimed to highlight what the group describes as the government’s “disconnect” from the realities faced by tenants struggling to find affordable housing.

“We really feel that the Quebec government is disconnected of the reality of what’s (it’s like for) those tenants that are struggling to find a place to stay,” said Catherine Lussier, FRAPRU’s coordinator.

Community groups accuse the government of ignoring skyrocketing rents and the growing number of people experiencing homelessness. According to a Statistics Canada report released in June, asking rents in Montreal have increased by 71 per cent since 2019.

Protesters from outside Montreal

A total of around 500 in attendance, demonstrators came by the busload from across Quebec.

Among them was Léonie Lessard, a CEGEP student from Saint-Hyacinthe, who said the hour-and-a-half trip felt like her only option to respond against rising housing costs.

“It’s getting more and more expensive to just live in Quebec, and it’s even more expensive if you live in the city,” she said. “You have to do it for the other people that are living through that.”

Her friend Anne Hébert added that affordability, not just availability, remains the main issue.

“If we cannot afford to live there, it doesn’t matter how many (units) are there. I cannot pay the rent,” she said.

FRAPRU demanding more social housing

FRAPRU says the Quebec government’s Stratégie québécoise en habitation, a law meant to address the housing crisis by building 560,000 new homes by 2034, still lacks clear targets for developing social housing in the coming years. The group is calling for new programs and dedicated funding to create housing that’s “protected from market forces.”

“The main issue is that we consider housing — which that needs to be a right, that’s supposed to be a right — we consider it as a means to make profit,” Lussier said.

The organization also said that investing in social housing would cost less than the social and economic fallout of the housing and homelessness crises combined.

Why Nun’s Island?

The choice of Nun’s Island as the site of the protest was deliberate, according to Lussier. They say the area represents how housing has increasingly become an investment, pointing to large corporate landlords that, they argue, put profit before people.

It’s a sentiment shared by residents like Persia Shahdi, who lives in a privately managed building nearby.

“I’m opposed to the very general idea of big corporations owning a lot of the housing, mostly driven by profit, raising rents, following the market,” said Shahdi.

The demonstration also brought out disability rights advocates who say tenants with mobility challenges are often hit hardest by the lack of accessible and affordable units.

“Most apartments aren’t properly adapted,” said Christiane Forget, an activist with Ex aequo. “They’re not suitable or adaptable and they’re often hard to find.”

The march began at Parc Dan-Hanganu and continued through Nun’s Island, stopping at locations organizers said were tied to the “financialization of housing” in the area.