Valérie Plante pledges more affordable housing
Coderre calls plan to force developers to set aside 40 per cent of units ‘impossible’
Projet Montréal is pledging to recalibrate Montreal’s housing rules to maintain social diversity and reduce the number of residents forced out of their homes by rising rents or home prices.
If elected in the November municipal elections, the party will oblige building developers to set aside 40 per cent of the units in their projects for social and affordable housing.
The laws would apply to buildings with five or more units; in projects of fewer than 50 units, promoters would have the option of paying into a housing fund as opposed to supplying affordable housing if it were deemed too complicated or costly.
The party is also pushing for a certain percentage of the units to have three or more bedrooms to ensure enough space for families seeking homes in the city and residents who work from home.
“It’s a subject that preoccupies a large segment of the population, particularly in a neighbourhood like here, Hochelaga-Maisonneuve,” said Valérie Plante, Projet Montréal leader and mayoral candidate at a news conference Tuesday morning.
“How do we preserve this balance, this social diversity that is so dear to Montrealers, and in contrast to large cities like Toronto or Vancouver that have difficulties keeping their social diversity? We want to be part of the solution and be much more proactive.”
Although the City of Montreal already has an “inclusion strategy” that is supposed to entice promoters to provide 30 per cent social and affordable housing in their projects, it is rarely used, Mile-End councillor Richard Ryan said.
While the call to include social housing is voluntary, the city can often coerce developers into supplying it in exchange for granting derogations to local bylaws, such as allowing a developer to add extra storeys to their project that exceed zoning regulations. Yet in the Ville-Marie borough, in 30 cases since 2013 where the city could have used this lever, it did so only twice, Ryan said.
Promoters are reluctant to include social and affordable housing because they fear it will cut
How do we preserve this balance, this social diversity that is so dear to Montrealers?
into their profit margins, or even make their projects unprofitable. However, Ryan says there are different formulations to ensure profitability.
Having 40 per cent of a project put aside for social housing, in which a government agency or non-profit group ensures those units will be sold or rented, can save a promoter money and effort in aspects related to sales, mortgage interest rates and enticing would-be buyers who are hesitant to move into empty buildings.
Asked if the regulations risk scaring developers off and enticing them to build outside of Montreal, or killing the market for housing affordable to the middle class, Plante said the regulations would be pliant to ensure promoters would still be interested in building in the city. The measures would allow the city to create 12,000 more social and affordable housing units in four years in a city where 25,000 are on waiting lists for such spots, she said.
Incumbent mayor Denis Coderre said the plan would not work because Projet Montréal is attempting to force promoters to do something they will not accept.
“It’s not realistic. It’s impossible,” he said. “We will create 5,000 new spots in our next mandate and that is verified,” under the regulations in existence, he said. “To force promoters to do 40 per cent, it won’t work. We don’t want the city to become an irritant to promoters.”
Also Tuesday, the Coderre administration unveiled new pledges to combat global warming, including creating more infrastructure in parks, alleyways and elsewhere that can trap water during torrential rains to reduce flooding, and through attaining its objective of reducing the amount of drinking water Montreal uses by 20 per cent through education campaigns and by fixing the city’s leaking infrastructure.
The administration already made significant steps to lessen its carbon footprint by moving toward banning or reducing the use of plastic bags and wood-burning stoves, creating 50 kilometres of bike paths annually, creating 134 green alleyways, expanding compostable garbage collection to divert organic waste from landfills, and by planting tens of thousands of trees to increase the city ’s green canopy.