Published November 11, 2023

Joel Ceausu – The Suburban LJI Reporter

Sometimes a symbol is a very powerful thing, says Rev. Joel Coppieters, holding up a house key at borough council this month. “It’s the key to where I live,” says the minister of the Côte des Neiges Presbyterian Church. “It’s the key to where I slept dry during the storms last week. It’s the key to the place where I hope my wife is waiting for me tonight with some leftovers from dinner.”

Coppieters says since beginning his work with the local population 11 years ago, “it soon became clear that almost all problems and difficulties were, at the root, a question of safe, affordable, warm and healthy housing.” About five years ago he began collecting keys for every family in the borough – and then the island of Montreal – that needed a comfortable, affordable place to live. Today, in his office at the church on Côte Ste. Catherine, sit five heavy buckets filled with about 25,000 keys he has collected, representing some 25,000 families “waiting for that precious little key.”

“In CDN-NDG, because we are experiencing the scourge of housing lack more than many other boroughs, I believe that we have a very important and preponderant role. I know it’s complex, I know it takes the provincial level, the federal level, it takes everyone.” But in the response to the issue of homelessness, Coppieters is urging a bolder response. “Every time someone asks a question about what we do in the borough, we can’t get a straight answer,” he says, citing responses about starting 20 homes, planning another 30, etc., when it would be a great help if there were specific targets. “If we had a specific report, we think this year we might have 300… You can give targets with precise numbers. That’s it, that’s my key.”

Borough Mayor Gracia Kasoki Katahwa replied that “I can tear my shirt every day, scream at Legault and so on. But I think you understand that the money doesn’t come from us.” There are a lot of strategies across the island and in Côte des Neiges–Notre Dame de Grâce to protect tenants, she said, such as Airbnb guidelines and more. “The people responsible for social housing, the people who hold the keys, are the Quebec government… We’re going to continue to say loud and clear that we need social housing in the borough, some of which have been projects that have been unblocked over the years.”

“What gets measured gets done,” Coppieters maintained, “and that’s why some of us are pushing for a number. Day after day, there is someone who says we need 2,000, 3,000, 4,000 housing units in Côte des Neiges. Every day, every week, someone has to tell Mr. Legault, Mr. Trudeau, the others, ‘We need 4,000. We have 20? Thank you, now we need 3,980, 3,000 and so on.’ I think we’re afraid of the number because it’s too big. But the number has to be frightening for it to make us do what we have to do.” n

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