With three months to go before the provincial general election, many citizens are gathering to denounce the unaffordability of housing in Quebec. Demonstrations took place simultaneously in Montreal, Quebec City, and Rouyn-Noranda to make their demands heard.
There are three of them. It is a question of implementing rent control, developing social housing that meets needs, and recognizing the right to housing in the Charter of Rights and Freedoms.
The organizer of the event is the Coalition Against High Cost Housing (COLOC), which brings together more than 120 organizations from various backgrounds, including union, community, feminist and student. There are not only housing committees in this coalition, which was launched last April, said Véronique Laflamme, spokesperson for the Front d’action populaire en réaménagement urbain (FRAPRU), in an interview.
“The demonstration clearly emphasizes this issue, which is not totally new, but which, in the last year, I would say, has been the consensus of large parts of the social movements, that is to say the high cost of housing,” said Ms. Laflamme.
“We have decided to join forces to build a coalition against expensive housing, with the prospect that with the upcoming elections, there must be a united front, a popular voice that emerges and that brings out conditions that are minimal for us to get out of a housing crisis that has been systematic for decades,” adds Benoit Rullier, coordinator of the Regroupement des comités logement et associations de locataires du Québec (RCLALQ).
Rullier returns to the three demands of the coalition. The government must recognize the right to housing in the Charter of Rights and Freedoms because we must stop letting people believe that “having four walls and a poor roof is housing”. Including it in the Charter means defending the right to decent housing for all, he says.
As for the construction of social housing, he points out that for several years, there has not been “recurrent social housing in Quebec in the necessary volumes.”
“We want real social housing programs and not unaffordable housing,” he pleads.
The rent register serves to break the escalation of rent increases, which continue to grow. In addition, there is such a registry set up by the organization Vivre en ville. “It would be quite simple to take an existing tool, adapt it a little, and we could have the means to have a rent register,” says Mr. Rullier.
Laflamme reminds us that the housing crisis affects all regions of Quebec. “It’s an issue for people from different backgrounds, from different regions, who see how quickly rents have exploded in recent years, thanks to this shortage of rental housing, real estate speculation as well,” she says. The result today is that the housing that is available is overpriced for large sections of the population, especially for low- and modest-income tenants, of whom there are already tens of thousands in Quebec who spend too much of their income on housing.”
According to the Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation (CMHC), a household should spend a maximum of 30 per cent of its pre-tax income on housing. If they exceed this threshold, they are considered to be in a situation of financial stress.
–This report by La Presse Canadienne was translated by CityNews
