The housing crisis currently raging in Quebec means that July 1, which is fast approaching, will be “the worst of our lives” according to the housing director of Vivre en ville, Adam Mongrain.
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“It’s a disaster predicted,” he said in an interview on the show “Le Québec Matin.” It’s not yet July 1st, and it’s already a disaster. The figures currently coming from municipalities and the administrative housing tribunal indicate that we are currently heading towards the worst July 1st of our lives.”
“We don’t seem to be taking the right measure to ensure that next year, 2025, it won’t be the worst of our lives again,” he adds.
Many people are struggling to find adequate housing less than two months before the fast-approaching July 1 deadline.
“Finding suitable housing is a full-time job and the majority of people looking to move already have a full-time job,” says the expert.
“It can be extremely demanding, extremely difficult, stressful and even depressing to spend hours and hours going through ads online and in newspapers. […] and not making progress,” he adds.
However, there are rehousing assistance services that can provide temporary assistance.
“Professionals support tenants to try to make a match between an apartment that is vacant and a tenant household, mentions the housing director at Vivre en ville.
“It’s something that helps, in addition to the fact that people who call may learn that they qualify for government assistance and that there may be specific resources that could help them,” he adds. .
However, these services have their limits.
“It has a hard limit since we cannot accommodate a household in an apartment that does not exist,” he says. What we are seeing at the moment is that the needs far exceed the available apartments.”
“You reap what you sow”
The situation has reached this point due to a lack of urgency from public decision-makers on this subject in recent years, according to Adam Mongrain.
“We reap what we sow,” he explains. We have an accumulated delay in our measures announced or in force and also the seriousness we give to this problem. This is what puts us a little bit in the perfect storm that we have been talking about in recent years.
“We really didn’t move on prevention and now we are moving a little to wipe away the damage, which far exceeds the forecasts that had been made and the measures that we will need to prevent this from contaminating the rest of our lives. are not yet announced,” he continues.
The Trudeau government’s announcements on housing encourage this, but for them to lead to real changes, agreements with other levels of government will be necessary.
“It’s going to take time before it becomes concrete,” he says. Agreements must be negotiated between cities or provinces. The money that is announced will lead to new construction which will do a lot of good, but construction takes several years.”
“We rely a lot on governments to agree on measures that are applicable and that will really help the population,” he adds.
Watch the full interview in the video above
