By Joel Ceausu
The Suburban
As July 1 nears, low-income renters are facing a stark housing situation, with more than 310,000 Montreal households — some 18,000 more than last year — do not make enough to pay for basic needs.
That’s the finding of the latest residual income measure from Centraide of Greater Montreal, which is both sounding the alarm but also holding out reason for hope in the face of the housing crisis.
The measure combines data points to track how people’s incomes can cover living expenses and determine how much is missing from their budgets to cover essentials. This year, the minimum annual income that Greater Montreal renters need to meet basic needs for housing, food, clothing and transportation is $31,000.
Centraide created the income measure in May 2023 with McKinsey & Company, which provided pro bono services to help track changes in Greater Montreal’s housing situation.
“High housing costs and the current shortage have increased people’s needs and in turn put pressure on the community sector,” said Centraide executive director Claude Pinard, adding Centraide increased financial support for housing committees to help thousands of tenants dealing with housing problems, “which have a domino effect on other social issues, such as mental health, child development, domestic violence, and homelessness. It is imperative that we keep pooling our solutions in order to tackle this human crisis.”
There is hope he says, as key stakeholders from public, private and community sectors as well as regular citizens are mobilizing to find solutions to combat the crisis. Centraide launched a working group in 2022 to start discussions on housing issues, and with the Foundation of Greater Montreal and Institut du Québec published the Vital Signs on Housing report, an overview of the housing situation and its impacts, particularly for the most disadvantaged households. It then sought expertise from stakeholders in the private, community, social economy, and municipal service sectors when Pinard was named by the province and Plante administration to the 14-member working group formed to speed up development of a plan for the long-dormant Namur-Hippodrome sector.
Centraide points out that “another development is the Plancher Fund steered by the Community Housing Transformation Centre, and aims to pool the assets of community housing owners to build new housing units. Centraide of Greater Montreal is also selling its parking lot to be converted into housing. The land will be acquired by UTILE, which has shown leadership in the development of student housing and the fight against real estate speculation. Also, after reviewing social housing finding schemes in various countries, the Fédération des OSBL d’habitation de Montréal held study days last month to devise concrete housing proposals for Quebec.” n