City’s cheap housing often inglorious dumps

Montreal’s reputation for low rents has let us accept poor-quality housing

I’ll never forget my first honest-to-goodness, all-to-myself, pay-my-own-rent apartment.

It was a minuscule 1½ on McGill St. in Old Montreal, back in the late 1990s, when Old Montreal was bereft of the many services and amenities current residents probably take for granted. (Long story short, I used to have to take the 61 bus into Verdun to do my laundry, and the “dépanneur” across the street was open, rather unhelpfully, from 9 to 5, Monday to Friday.)

To call it a hovel would be engaging in flattery. “Dump” was probably closer to the mark, or maybe “rathole.” It had a dank refrigerator that, on a good day, sounded like a plane landing just outside my window. Speaking of windows: it had one small one that spent most of my year in the apartment stuck shut, even in the sweltering summer heat. The hideous wallpaper, or what was left of it, was cracked and peeling, the toilet worked only whenever it was in the mood, and it had a ratty carpet I didn’t like to stare at too closely lest I start to question the provenance of its many mystery stains.

I could go on, but I’m starting to get a little nauseous just thinking about it all — suffice it to say it was a classic first Montreal apartment. But its one unquestionable asset, and quite literally the only thing I look back on with any kind of longing, you won’t be surprised to hear, was its preposterously cheap rent: $275 a month, which even my university student-poverty lifestyle could handle with ease.

OK, at this point you might be wondering what point I’m getting at with this self-indulgent trip down memory lane. Here it is: I was reminded of my gloriously cheap but otherwise inglorious apartment after reading a recent Globe and Mail article, widely passed around on my social media networks, marvelling at how cheap renting an apartment in Montreal remains (especially relative to other large Canadian cities, namely Toronto and Vancouver).

It was an interesting and wellresearched article that touched on a lot of the historical and economic reasons for Montreal’s low rents — “ample but antique housing stock; a sluggish economy; and a language barrier that puts a soft cap on population growth,” as writer Eric Andrew-Gee boiled it down — although it doesn’t devote much attention to the fact that rents here are tightly controlled by the provincial Régie du logement. Or that gentrification has driven up rents in even some of our most resolutely blue-collar neighbourhoods, to the point that most of the cheap apartments that are still readily available on the island are concentrated in fewer districts, and rarely in Montreal’s more enviable enclaves.

My issue with the article wasn’t anything factual, but rather its underlying subtext: that Montreal’s glut of cheap rental units is a civic quality to be admired. Even the article’s title — “How does Montreal maintain its enviably low rents?” — suggests that this particularly Montreal phenomenon is one worth coveting.

For many of us, of course, it is; even those Montrealers who could easily afford to buy often simply prefer the convenience and lack of commitment, or down payment, of renting. For many more, including students, artists, lower-income residents and others of precarious financial standing, it’s hardly a choice.

And those who find themselves in those boats deserve goodquality, affordable housing, the shortage of which is a stubborn problem in Montreal despite repeated promises from all levels of government over the years to provide funding sufficient to tackle the issue once and for all.

The key phrase in the previous sentence is “good-quality.” I have long felt that unscrupulous landlords motivated solely by maximizing profits take advantage of a) Montreal’s reputation for cheap rents, and b) the well-worn idea that you get what you pay for, to offer sub-standard, dirty, unsafe and unhealthy apartments at ridiculously low prices, which helps to suppress overall rents in the city.

And those fears are regularly justified by horror stories we see in the media of tenants left to live in squalid conditions with little or no recourse, or hopes of improving their situation. While the city has tried to crack down on such inhumane dwellings in recent years, there’s little evidence to suggest the problem has been eradicated. Fixing this ongoing failure should become a priority for current or future municipal administrations.

As I mentioned off the top, I know personally what it’s like to put up with a lot in the name of living on the cheap. But sometimes I wonder if what we’re willing to swallow stops us from demanding better. Being a hub for cheap-rent seekers is one kind of claim to fame; being a city that offers clean, safe, affordable dwellings for all Montrealers, especially those who need it most, would be an even better one.