Office municipal d’habitation de Montréal

By Joel Goldenberg
The Suburban

The Montreal Economic Institute says that the Plante administration is Montreal’s largest slumlord, and should stay out of the housing market.

The latest MEI study says that Montreal’s social housing stock has worsened in the last five years, but Plante insists on building more such housing.

“Those who require housing assistance are being forced to live in deplorable conditions,” says Gabriel Giguère, senior public policy analyst at the MEI and author of the study. “Before purchasing and building more units, City Hall needs to address the fact that it has become Montreal’s largest slumlord.”

The study points out that “as part of its 2050 Land Use and Mobility Plan, the Plante administration aims to see 20 per cent of Montreal’s projected housing stock removed from the market. This would require building or purchasing 161,000 units at taxpayer expense by 2050.”

The MEI says the Office municipal d’habitation de Montréal (OMHM) manages 20,818 low-rent housing units, and that, of these “79.2 per cent were considered to be in either poor or very poor condition in April 2023. This is up from 47.6 per cent in 2019. The share of housing in very poor condition has increased even more significantly over this period, from 10.2 per cent to 48.5 per cent.” The organization also cited a quote from Plante to La Presse that the city can “no longer rely on the market in terms of creating new social housing.”

The MEI study argues that the solution to the unaffordability of housing is reducing the administration’s role in housing development.

“It’s a bit rich for Mayor Plante to claim that the market has not worked, given the number of hurdles her administration has added to housing development,” Giguère says. “Whether it’s through taxes on new homes, or longer permit delays, or even the outright obstruction of newbuild housing, her administration has made life more difficult for developers trying to build.”

The researcher adds that Montreal’s 20-20-20 bylaw, requiring that 20 percent of a new residential construction must be social housing, “amounts to a tax of up to $10,500 per new housing unit built for projects of six units or more.”

As well, “the average time it takes to obtain a residential construction permit has increased from 204 days to 326 days between 2019 and 2023. In the borough of Ville-Marie, it took an average of 540 days to get a residential building permit in 2023.

A previous MEI study says that “since coming into office, the Plante administration has obstructed the construction of projects totalling 23,760 units.” As well, “the city’s 2050 Land Use and Mobility Plan aims to add fewer units to the city’s housing stock than what would be built if the average pace of the past five years was simply maintained.

“Developers want to build in Montreal, but this administration does everything it can to stand in their way,” Giguère says. “Instead of trying to build fewer homes with more taxpayer money, the city should stop preventing the market from filling the need for housing.” n