Start announced on 94 social housing units in Lachine
By Chelsey St-Pierre
The Suburban
Montreal Mayor Valerie Plante announced the start of 94 housing units comprised of one to three bedrooms across the street from a 500-condo unit project in Lachine. The project is one of the first to adhere to the city’s 20-20-20 by-law that stipulates that 20 per cent of housing projects must be composed of social housing units.
“It shows that our bylaw for a mixed metropolis is yielding results,” Plante stated at a press conference last week. “Everyone agrees that we need to build more and faster, but we also need to protect the mixed housing aspect and for that to work, I need everyone to be part of it, including builders.”
“We’ve been working on this for six years. We are very happy because in the whole Lachine east eco- district we wanted a mix, a complete community and not leave anyone behind with just luxury condos. 94 units is a start,” Lachine Mayor Maja Vadonovic told The Suburban. Vodanovic says that Lachine used up the last of its resources from the abolished Acces Logis program that it had retained to put towards a viable project. “The Government of Quebec decided not to fund social housing and the city does not have billions from income tax and goods and services taxes that pay for schools, hospitals and social housing. The only thing we can do is put in a by law so that developers are obliged to include social housing. There is a new program with the federal government giving money directly to cities, but of course in Quebec, it runs through the provincial government.”
According to Vodanovic, for more projects like this to be made possible, the provincial government will need to step up its game and provide funding to give the city the ability to work with its developers to incentivize mixed or complete social housing projects to resolve the housing crisis. She says that this project, although a promising example of the city’s by-law, was only made possible because Lachine carried over remnants of the Acces Logis program to help support the developer in bringing the project to life. “Without Quebec’s support, we cannot resolve the crisis and we cannot even consider taxing our residents more than we are for something that Quebec is responsible for, especially while inflation is at an all time high.” n
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