housing crisis

Demonstrators brave the cold to demand rent freeze

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Demonstrators brave the cold to demand rent freeze 

Cassandra Kerwin, Local Journalism Initiative reporter 

Cassandra@qctonline.com

Renters’ rights groups are raising the alarm about the combined impact of inflation, rising food prices and record rent increases on renters, a week after the province’s housing tribunal announced a record high 5.9 per cent rent increase benchmark. They are calling on the provincial government to impose a freeze on rent increases. 

During “rent control week” activities organized by the Regroupement des comités logement et associations de locataires du Québec (RCLALQ), on Jan. 30, some 25 protesters gathered in the cold in Parc de l’Amérique-Française and marched across the street to the offices of Housing Minister France-Élaine Duranceau in Édifice Marie-Guyart in the hope of freezing rents. 

Contrary to popular belief, the RCLALQ states, “There is no rent control in Quebec,” leaving tenants vulnerable to abusive increases. When presented with an increase they believe is abusive, tenants can go before the Tribunal administratif du Logement (TAL) and have a judge set an increase. According to the RCLALQ, many tenants are unaware of their rights, and when they do contest abusive, negligent or illegal practices, they often fail to make their voices heard at the TAL. 

On Jan. 21, the TAL announced a 5.9 percent rent increase benchmark for 2025 (see article in Jan. 29, 2025 edition). While the Coalition de Québec contre les hausses de loyer claims this trend drives rents up across the board, landlords argue these increases are overdue, compensating for nearly 10 years of mismanagement within the Régie du Logement and the TAL and allowing landlords to adjust to the rising costs of maintenance. 

Nicolas Villamarin Bonilla of the Coalition stated, “Owners’ income has risen, allowing them to increase rents further. This wealth drain is making the poor poorer and the richest are getting richer at their expense. The outdated calculation methods are concerning, particularly regarding rent evolution this year.” He continued, “We need action before it’s too late. Many tenants are already struggling to pay rent or find affordable housing. Rent-setting by the TAL is ineffective.” 

As a recourse, the RCLALQ and the Coalition are demanding an immediate rent freeze and provincewide rent control. At the Jan. 30 protest at the housing ministry offices, they threw white confetti to mimic snow and sang a modified version of the theme from Frozen while distributing stickers asserting the right of tenants to refuse rent hikes, until security personnel showed them the exit. 

Along with rising rents, there is a housing crisis in Quebec, renters’ groups assert. “There is housing available, but it is even more expensive. What is currently being built in Saint-Sauveur, we are talking about 4 1/2s [two-bedroom apartments] that start at $1,600, $2,000 [per month]. This is well above the ability of a large part of the neighbourhood’s population to pay,” said Guillaume Béliveau Côté of the Comité des citoyens et des citoyennes du quartier Saint-Sauveur.

As of Feb. 1, there is no indication the government plans to legislate to freeze rents, despite calls for a freeze by the Quebec Liberal Party and Québec Solidaire. Duranceau has said the Coalition Avenir Québec government’s approach to the housing shortage is centred around increasing supply. 

With files from Ruby Pratka, Local Journalism Initiative reporter

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Parc-Extension Housing Crisis: Skyrocketing Rents and Gentrification Threaten to Uproot the Heart of Montreal’s Immigrant Community

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Dimitris Ilias
LJI Journalist

Parc-Extension, has long been a landing spot for new immigrants. However, recent developments have significantly impacted its housing market, leading to concerns about affordability and displacement.
Rising Property Prices and Rent Increases
The Montreal housing market has experienced notable price increases across various property types. In the Villeray–Saint-Michel–Parc-Extension area, the median price for single-family homes was $585,000, reflecting a 4% decrease, while condos saw a 3% increase to $475,000, and plexes experienced a 5% rise to $793,000.
These rising property values have led to higher rents, making it increasingly challenging for long-term residents to afford housing in the area. In the last year alone, rent in Montreal rose by 16.4%. The average monthly rent for a four-and-a-half apartment in Quebec went from $1,222 in 2020 to $1,504 in 2023.
Impact of Gentrification
The arrival of the Université de Montréal campus in 2019 has been a significant factor in the neighborhood’s gentrification. This development attracted wealthier students and professionals, leading landlords to increase rents or repurpose properties to cater to this new demographic. Consequently, many long-standing residents, particularly from immigrant communities, have faced evictions or have been pressured to leave.
Tenant Challenges and Advocacy
Tenants in Parc-Extension have reported various challenges, including substandard living conditions and pressure from landlords to vacate. In one case, a landlord was ordered to pay over $3,500 in compensation to an immigrant family for failing to maintain safe living conditions.
Community organizations like the Comité d’Action de Parc-Extension (CAPE) have been actively supporting residents by mapping evictions and advocating for more robust tenant protections. Their efforts aim to raise awareness about the effects of gentrification and to hold stakeholders accountable.
Calls for Social Housing
In response to the housing crisis, residents and advocates have been calling for increased investment in social housing. Providing for all low-income households in greater Montreal would require about 266,000 new subsidized housing units. However, the Greater Montreal Area has added about 1,400 social housing units a year since 1995, highlighting a significant gap between supply and demand.

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Montreal leads country in renters at 63%

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By Joel Ceausu
The Suburban

Canada’s housing crisis has occupied national and local headlines for more than a year, influenced policy and debate at every government level, and raised fingers towards immigration, student populations, inflation, pandemic, over-regulation and more.

While remedies are debated, one thing is not: The share of people renting their homes in Quebec is larger than ever before, and Montreal reigns with more than 63%, leading among Canada’s 50 biggest cities at almost twice the national average of 33%.

In fact, eight of Quebec’s 10 largest cities have a percentage of renters higher than 33%, and it’s not just young people — from Gen Z to Baby Boomers, renting has become widespread across all age groups according to a Point2Homes.com report based on 2021 Census data from Statistics Canada. In five Quebec cities — including Longueuil, Quebec City, and Trois-Rivières — more than 90% of residents under 24 are tenants, and three others have the highest percentages of seniors renting out of Canada’s major cities – about half of the population 65 and over. Lévis had Quebec’s biggest growth in renter share, from 30.7% to 34.1%. Terrebonne and Laval follow with similar increases. Despite Montreal’s smallest spike, it nevertheless tops the country’s list.

Leading this evolution are ongoing demographic shifts: immigration, aging population, and people relocating closer to employment hubs. But there are also practical reasons, like the financial benefits of renting in a high-priced housing market as well as preference for a maintenance-free lifestyle.

Canada has nearly one million more renter households since a decade ago, according to the Point2Homes.com report: “Whether it’s about having the flexibility to move whenever, pinching pennies or just freedom from fixing leaky faucets,” one thing’s for sure: Canada has reached unprecedented levels of renters — and Montreal is leading the charge. (Toronto has more renter households (551,290) but ranks fifth in percentage.) That same demand also leads to a significant portion of recently built stock becoming renter-occupied: More than 40% of dwellings built from 2016 to 2021 are being rented, the highest rate in decades.

Montreal is known for some of the lowest average rent prices among the country’s largest markets. “In fact, according to Numbeo, rents in the city centre (about $3,000) are significantly lower compared to average rents in other major downtowns like Toronto, Vancouver, and nearby Burnaby.” Over 54% of Vancouver households opt to rent in the city, where home prices go for nearly $1.3 million. Alongside Trois-Rivières and Saguenay, Sherbrooke is one of the three major cities where rent is less than $1,500, even in the city centre. “Meanwhile, given its vast student population attending Queen’s University, nearly 93% of Kingston’s under-24-year-olds rent, and true to its vocation as a Gen-Z-attractive city, Montreal displays an equally huge share of young tenants.”

Read more: https://www.point2homes.com/news/canada-real-estate/rentership-on-the-rise-montreal-canada-renter-capital.html n

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Poilievre addresses housing crisis in Pointe Claire visit

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By Chelsey St-Pierre

Federal Conservative leader Pierre Poilievre held a news conference in the Fairview Pointe-Claire shopping centre’s parking lot as part of a series of stops where he shed light on hyper-local issues causing delays in housing projects affecting the overall Canadian housing crisis.

Tens of thousands of housing units have been stalled in the Greater Montreal Area, which caught the attention of the Federal Conservative leader. In January, he declared Montreal Mayor Valerie Plante to be “incompetent”, as she continues to stall development.

Poilievre criticized the City of Pointe-Claire for blocking the Cadillac Fairview development plan for part of the mall’s parking lot. “Local bureaucracy is blocking that construction that would allow seniors and students to live next to a massive transit station.”

Pointe-Claire Mayor Tim Thomas disagreed, stating that he was elected for the purpose of slowing down development. “Too many housing units have been built without much thought given to the best way to design the urban fabric. This is sensible, responsible urban planning in a community where developers have been given too many red carpets, and not enough red tape,” Thomas wrote in response to Poilievre’s visit.

One thing Poilievre and Thomas agreed on is that the green space for Fairview Forest should remain untouched in the development plan. Cadillac Fairview’s proposal includes two 25-storey residential towers as part of a first phase and single family units in lieu of the green space as part of the second phase. Both phases of the proposed development project were stalled by an interim control bylaw issued in the spring of 2022.

Poilievre said the City of Pointe-Claire could have managed the development better. He stated that under the Conservative government, all new transit projects would be required to include a housing component. “Trudeau has caused this problem by funding local bureaucracies that block homebuilding,” Poilievre told reporters. “Building homes is a 911 emergency and I have a good-sense plan to get it done.”

Poilievre’s plan includes proposed incentives for municipalities who reach development goals and penalties for municipalities that score below the calculated rate of target development. The calculation would include consideration for the size of the municipality while considering the effect and contribution to the overall economy. n

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Montrealers urge government to stop Bill 31

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Protesters hold up a sign reading “it took three months to recognize a genocidal ‘state’. Do you really think the CAQ is worried about its tenants? Liberation for all.” Photo Andraé Lerone Lewis

Sarah-Maria Khoueiry
Local Journalism Initiative

On Feb. 3, around a thousand protesters gathered in front of the Saint-Édouard Church on the corner of Beaubien and Saint-Denis Street, where organizers handed out pamphlets and chant guides to the crowd.

The protest, organized by the Coalition of Housing Committees and Tenants Associations of Quebec (RCLALQ), aimed to publicly oppose  Bill 31. This bill, if passed, will allow landlords to reject lease transfers with no valid explanation, and then cancel the lease.

“The rents are already too high, and they will be higher after that,” said Martin Blanchard, the coordinator of the RCLALQ. “There are other things that we are mad about, but the lease transfer thing is the most damning.”

Among other concerns expressed by organizers such as Rosalye, the community organizer of the Comité logement de la Petite Patrie, is the discrimination against tenants from marginalized communities. Rosalye’s last name is revoked for fear of being refused an apartment in the future. She believes that expressing a negative opinion on current housing management could deny her housing in the future. Rosalye thinks France-Élaine Duranceau, Quebec’s housing minister, is directly “attacking tenants” by only consulting with landlords rather than talking to tenant rights’ organizations.

She also explained that the bill would allow municipalities to sell social housing (HLM).

“The fact that people will be able to buy HLM [is] so problematic,” she added. “That’s something we should be proud of as Quebecers to have for people that have less revenue.”

Most chants called for the resignation of Duranceau. The RCLALQ also demanded a rent freeze, rent control, abolishing security deposits, and the conservation of lease transfers.

The protesters marched down Beaubien Street, all the way to Marché Jean Talon by way of Little Italy, and finally reached the Centre de Ressources et d’Action Communautaire de la Petite-Patrie (CRACPP). The centre is home to the Comité logement de la Petite Patrie, an organization that helps people facing issues with housing, such as rent increases, vermin, discrimination, and gentrification.

Many speeches also brought up the link between the housing crisis, immigration influx and asylum seekers.

Cédric Dussault, the spokesperson of the RCLALQ, argued in an introductory speech that the housing crisis had touched regions with low immigration rates, like Gaspésie, discrediting the link between the two issues.

“It’s trying to deviate the tension from something else,” said Blanchard. “The problem [is] that the rates are too high and that the owners have too much leeway driving up rents.”

Among the attendees was Rich, a 64-year-old man living in Notre-Dame-de-Grâce who was recently evicted from his house, and who wished to remain anonymous. He believes the government doesn’t have a clear idea of how passing this bill will affect the population on a long-term basis.

“I just wish we weren’t here today,” he said. He expressed his disappointment in regards to the government’s lack of vision as to what the decisions are today and how they’re going to affect us. “It’s just going to get worse,” he said.

He believes that protesting gets exposure in the news that can help bring change.

“Through advocacy, you’re never alone,” Rich said.

Multiple attendees were waving Palestinian flags and wearing keffiyehs. A sign written in the colours of the Palestinian flag read, in French, “Three months to recognize a genocidal ‘state.’ Do you really think the CAQ cares about tenants? Liberation for all.”

Juan Carlos Angel Ramirez, a protester with the Alliance Ouvrière contingent, thinks that the issues are interconnected.

“If the people here rise up against the [Canadian] government […] maybe, that’s how we can change things [everywhere] somehow,” he said.

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Parc-Ex: A testimony of Montreal’s housing crisis

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Graphic by Maya Robitaille Lopez

Julia Cieri
Local Journalism Initiative

Parc-Extension, a borough with a rich history, characterized by a predominantly working-class population and vibrant immigrant communities, has traditionally faced economic challenges.

Amy Darwish, a worker at Comité d’Action de Parc-Extension (CAPE), said that immigrant tenants in the area are being hit the hardest by the housing crisis, as Parc-Extension is one of the neighbourhoods in the city that is commonly subjected to gentrification and the housing crisis.

According to Darwish, a major cause of gentrification in Parc-Extension was the arrival of the Université de Montréal (UdeM) campus. There was an enormous amount of pressure put on tenants as a result, seen in the form of abusive rent increases, evictions and intimidation from landlords, she explained. The arrival of the campus in 2019 brought an influx of amenities catering to wealthy students, “which incentivized landlords to force out long-term tenants and rent out at much higher rates,” Darwish said. 

Beyond the construction of the UdeM campus as a sign of gentrification in Parc-Extension, renting a place to live in is proving to be a hurdle in itself. According to a 2021 survey conducted by the Regroupement des comités logement et associations de locataires du Québec (RCLALQ), several barriers stand in the way of finding housing for Parc-Extension residents. With most rental listings being posted exclusively online, those with limited internet and digital access are left unable to access the advertisements. 

“You used to be able to find apartments in adjacent neighbourhoods,” said Darwish. “But what we’re seeing now is that people are being pushed off the island altogether.”

In addition, several tenants experienced being turned away from possible housing in discriminatory ways. The survey found that tenants with children, foreign accents, who are single women, and individuals with “non-Quebecois” names are more likely to be rejected from renting.

“[The housing crisis] disproportionately affects immigrants, women, single parents, elderly people; and people who don’t have the financial, organizational [means], or time to be able to fight back,” said Melissa Simard, a member of the Montreal’s Autonomous Tenant Union (MATU), a non-hierarchical tenant union. 

RCLALQ member Cédrick Dussault explained that, “[recent immigrants] are targets for eviction because they do not know their rights, as well as people who were here for a long time.”

Tenants who find themselves in discriminatory situations may fight for their rights, but must do so through the Régie du logement. The process however, like the listings, is often done online or over the phone, and may only be done in French or English. Additionally, some tenants may not know this service is available to them.

Despite discrimination in housing being forbidden by law, Dussault added that “landlords can just pick and choose who to accommodate.”

Darwish echoed Dussault’s sentiment. “[Discrimination] is very much triggered by the arrival of whiter, wealthier residents into the neighbourhood,” said Darwish. “We see a lot of landlords who are flat out refusing to rent to immigrants and are openly expressing preferences.” 

Simard believes harmful stereotypes carried out against marginalized communities, including assumptions about their lifestyle and economic contributions, foster more barriers within the housing market.

The issue is also intertwined with unstable legal statuses. Renting while undocumented makes it more difficult to fight for housing rights for fear of being denounced to immigration by landlords. “Having precarious immigration statuses is something that complicates people’s capacity to navigate a housing crisis,” Darwish said.

Montreal has also become a hot real estate market, suitable for speculation—an investment method among properties in which investors expect high rates of return quickly.

Dussault explained that ‘speculation’ drives landlords to make the most profit possible, in places that were originally cheap and affordable, with inexpensive buildings, slowly but surely rendering all sectors of Montreal with exorbitant rents. 

The issue is additionally apparent at the provincial level, according to tenant union associations. “This is probably the most severe housing crisis that we’ve had in the province,” Dussault said.

“Basically, there is no control on the price of rent,” he added. “When there is a change in tenant, the landlord can dictate the price they want.” 

While tenant rights exist in the Code civil du Québec, Dussault believes they are not sufficiently protected, and landlords do not face major consequences when bending the rules.

In the summer of 2023, a landlord in the Notre-Dame-de-Grâce neighbourhood attempted to bypass “tribunal rules” by giving money to their tenants in exchange for their eviction.

The tribunal rules in question refer to the Tribunal administratif du logement. Darwish said she’s seen several other cases like these in Parc-Extension. 

“You see many instances where landlords say they’re going to get permits to renovate or are going to be moving in a family member, but it doesn’t end up happening, and they just rent to someone else for higher rates,” she added.

Every year, the tribunal publishes a suggested increase in rent prices for landlords to refer to in their own increases. However, according to the RCLALQ, they are not legally bound to follow this suggestion.

“For a long time, Montreal was considered more affordable than other cities in Canada, like Vancouver and Toronto, but data shows that we’re catching up,” said Dussault. In the last year alone, rent in Montreal rose by 16.4 per cent. According to statistics by the RCLALQ, the average monthly rent for a four-and-a-half apartment in Quebec went from $1,222 in 2020 to $1,504 in 2023. For more than three rooms, it amounts to almost $2,000 on average.

The reason for this bias towards landlords, according to MATU, is that government employees and ministers are part of the people who benefit from these systems. The Minister of Housing, France-Élaine Duranceau, is a former real estate agent.

“This is reflective of the ideas around housing and accessibility,” said Simard. “The government is encouraging the speculative real estate market.”

Dussault supported this statement. “It’s a matter of social class,” he said. “People who are in power come from backgrounds of real estate investors.” 

Bill 31 is another barrier to housing accessibility for Montreal tenants. The bill, currently under review, would eliminate the possibility of lease transfers, and would consequently hit lower-income renters the hardest. 

“Lease transfers were a way of keeping rents affordable and getting around housing discrimination in neighbourhoods,” Darwish said. 

Simard believes lease transfers were an important tool for tenants. “They were kind of the last strongholds of tenants to be able to afford housing, and they’re taking that away,” she said. 

At the beginning of this year, another resource for tenants was shut down. AccèsLogis has served as the main provincial social housing program since 1997. According to the housing minister, the project was too outdated, and carried out too slowly.

To Darwish, these are all “concerted efforts by the Legault government to backtrack significantly on tenants’ rights.”

With files from Iness Rifay.

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Bill 31 will mean more impossible choices for Montreal women

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Bill 31 will only make the housing crisis worse for women. Graphic Panos Michalakopoulos

Benjamin Lucas
Local Journalism Initiative

Content warning: this article mentions suicide and abuse.

Posters on signposts, recurring protests down major streets, petitions and newscasts reveal the outrage of renters against the Legault regime’s proposed end to lease transfers through Bill 31. 

The gravity of the situation cannot be overstated: Quebec now stands at a crossroads, with a 44 per cent increase in homelessness in five years and 500 households left without a lease last moving day. The effects of the housing crisis have cascaded across all Canadian society. 

Women, who are at an economic disadvantage, are impacted more than most—with single mothers being 38 per cent more likely to spend more than a third of their income on rent. The result of this is that women having experienced abuse have to make a choice: remain with their abusers on whom they depend for housing, or face homelessness. 

The housing crisis is putting women in a double bind, forcing them to make impossible decisions, and exacerbating it will only put more strain on already scarce resources. Like living in any other city, being in Montreal brings you face-to-face with certain social realities. 

Advocates and experts say that lease transfers are one of the mechanisms that keep rent controlled, and in addition, the Coalition Avenir Québec’s (CAQ) bill would allow for the selling off of much-needed social housing. Given that Montreal is the only city in Canada with more renters than owners, this is especially dangerous.

Throughout Canada, the story is the same. There is  a simultaneous rising of rents and domestic abuse. Women’s shelters have lost $150 million in federal funding and face high staff turnover due to their inability to pay them. One woman, interviewed by the CBC, said, “I can’t try to find a job, I can’t better myself, I can’t be safe if I don’t have a home.” 

What is a woman to do? Some have even attempted suicide to escape this double bind. 

This is not hypothetical. The strain of the housing crisis on domestic violence survivors has already been seen as they lose alternatives to living with their abusers. In Montreal, the women’s shelter Chez Doris was forced to shut down temporarily because it could not feed everyone nor did it have the staff to keep up with demand. This drives women to other shelters, putting more strain on them in turn. A conservative estimate places the number of women turned away from Canadian shelters because of a lack of space at 19,000 per month.  

Wait lists for social housing in Canada can be a years long wait, and even the (relatively) fortunate women who can find a bed in a shelter may be unable to find a long-term place to go afterwards, leaving them to spend up to a year in the transition homes. At every stage, the housing crisis means abused women are left with no place to go to get away from their abusers. 

Stories from women in this situation are stark and display the impossible situations that they face. Women’s experiences include fearing losing custody of their children because they lack a stable home, spending weeks in abusive homes waiting for calls from shelters, or making the decision to return to the men abusing them. Living with their abusers means forfeiting full participation in society, as explored in Kylie Cheung’s book Survivor Injustice, including losing control over their ability to vote, reproductive system, and too often escalating to losing their life.  

The CAQ’s policy makes all this worse. By increasing rent, more people will be made unhoused, and this will put even more strain on the shelters that are available now. More women will be unable to leave their abusers. This comes in the aftermath of a rising tide of domestic abuse, just one sordid result of Legault’s COVID-19 policy.  

Perhaps all of this is easy for Legault to ignore, but it is impossible for women who have become ensnared in it. If the state fails to provide alternatives, it is complicit in this abuse. Legault should obey the will of Montreal renters and rescind Bill 31 immediately. 

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