Organizations demand a transpartisan committee against the housing crisis in Quebec

Seeing July 1 rapidly approaching, community organizations are asking the Legault government to “put aside partisanship” by forming a “transpartisan and interministerial” committee responsible for finding solutions to the “unprecedented” housing crisis plaguing Quebec.

The committee would be responsible for undertaking emergency actions to curb the rise in rents and evictions, but also to find solutions perennialexplained the director of the Quebec Group of Alternative Mental Health Resources, Anne-Marie Boucher.

Accompanied by representatives of community organizations who came to testify to the exhaustion of their teams, she asked elected officials and ministries to working together, all parties combined. We will not make political capital from such a social crisis.

As moving day approaches in Quebec, 1,300 households are still looking for housing. Among Canadian renters, 3% have been evicted in 2023, according to a study by Statistics Canada. In more than half of the cases, evictions are related to the owner taking back the home to occupy it, renovate it or sell it.

In the short term, we must tackle fraudulent predatory tactics and to the explosion of rents by capping their increase and keeping a rent register, said Cédric Dussault, from the Regroupement des comités logement et associations de locataires du Québec (RCLALQ).

Considering the significant number of evictions in Quebec and the inability to find affordable housing, Mr. Dussault believes that the catastrophic housing situation in Quebec is now directly responsible for more than half of the homelessness situations in the province.

Addressing root causes

The united front of community organizations expects a response from the government in the coming days. They have joined forces to express the exhaustion of their teams in the face of the sharp increase in requests for services related to the housing crisis that they must deal with.

In addition to begging leaders to urgently take action to help them, community organizations also stressed the importance of finding long-term solutions.

The cross-party committee would therefore have its work cut out for it, because fundamentally, this is a crisis. affordabilityrecalled Thursday at the microphone of All one morning Professor at the UQAM School of Social Work, Louis Gaudreau. It is not a crisis of the construction industry, which is hampered in its attempts to meet housing needshe added.

The professor emphasizes that, for 20 years, Quebec has been the scene of record investments for the sale, construction and renovation of housing, but thatwe mainly focused on the high-end sector of the rental marketwithout meeting the needs for affordable, non-market or social housing.

There is not necessarily a direct relationship between the increase in supply and the stabilization or decline of priceshe concludes. What we build must also be able to meet needs and not just generate revenue for an industry.

According to Louis Gaudreau, the solution therefore involves massive public investment in the construction of non-market and social housing which could compete with the private market.