Valérie Plante’s plan to stem exodus needs more work
Projet Montréal leader to use city powers to boost number of three-bedroom condos
Raising a family in a two-bedroom condo in the heart of Montreal wasn’t so much a deliberate plan as a matter of happenstance.
After months of searching and with a first baby on the way, we bought what seemed like a roomy 1,200-square-foot apartment in 2010. We figured we’d eventually move up to something bigger. Seven years and two kids later, we’re still there: four humans, a fish and a menagerie of stuffed animals, sharing a home that feels increasingly cluttered and cramped.
Sure, we’ve looked for something roomier, with another bedroom, a yard and maybe a basement playroom. But in our neighbourhood or anywhere else in central Montreal such abodes are few and far between — or else they cost a lot of money.
The lure of the suburbs is strong for my husband, who is full of nostalgia for his own childhood. But I would have great difficulty trading the ability to walk or bike to work, school or daycare in a matter of minutes for a long commute or having to jump in the car every time I forget something at the supermarket.
So Projet Montréal leader Valérie Plante’s latest campaign promise seems aimed at households like mine. As part of her effort to keep families from fleeing the city and create vibrant neighbourhoods, she is vowing to use Montreal’s newly acquired powers to force developers to ensure 20 per cent of the units in their condo projects have three bedrooms.
Plante said the rules would apply to new construction buildings with more than 40 units. She estimates that with the former Blue Bonnets site, eastern Lachine and the area around Radio-Canada and the Molson brewery slated for major redevelopment in the coming years, such a policy could lead to the creation of 4,500 new dwellings big enough to accommodate families.
The idea makes sense in theory, but I foresee two problems in practice (other than griping from developers who will claim there isn’t a market for what she’s calling for).
If you examine the floor plans of many of the brand-new threebedroom units on the market (as I frequently do for obvious reasons), it always seems as if the architects take the floor space from the common areas without increasing the overall squarefootage.
So families who choose condo life may get an extra bedroom, but they probably find themselves bumping elbows at the dinner table and snuggling closely while watching TV.
Even if the same mechanisms for requiring more three bedroom units could be used to compel developers to supersize their floor plans, it would likely drive up prices, which are already unaffordable for many families.
While Montreal’s real estate market is far more reasonable than the insanity of Toronto or Vancouver, it is heating up quickly. Plante says increasing the number of three-bedroom units on the market will reduce competition and cool prices. But it could still drive the kind of phenomenon seen in New York City or San Francisco: where the wealthy take over the centre of the city and the poor and working class are driven to the margins.
It might just be easier to offer rebates on bunk beds and stack local libraries with books about the joys of minimalism. But Plante is right to want to put the brakes on the exodus of families to the suburbs. Between 2010 and 2016, she said 30,000 children under 15 left Montreal.
That’s not only bad for the economy, productivity and the businesses these largely middleclass families would patronize if they remained in the city; it’s bad for the environment. The latest census data shows many of these ex-Montrealers are not heading to traditional bedroom communities like Kirkland or Otterburn Park, but to the former fields, forests and farmland of St-Colomban, Mirabel and Les Coteaux. This worsens congestion on the highways and puts pressure on public transit authorities to reach an ever more distant ridership.
But getting families to stay in or come to Montreal is about more than having an extra bedroom. It’s about having access to schools — and schools that aren’t crumbling. It’s about enough greenspace and parks to compensate for not having a backyard. It’s about wide sidewalks, secure crosswalks, safe places to play and bike paths that are separate from traffic so that children can ride without risking their lives.
Plante has already pledged to cut property taxes for Montrealers with children, though she has yet to unveil the details, and she is promising to announce more family-friendly policy proposals.
It’s clear that as a city-dwelling mom who cycles, Plante gets what it takes to raise kids in Montreal’s core. She might be an easy sell to urban voters in the boroughs where Projet Montréal councils have been rolling out measures that make the cityscape more livable one block, one park, one bike lane, one planter, one ruelle verte at a time.
But to claim victory on Nov. 5, Plante is going to have to convince some Montrealers who use their cars to get to work, drop off the kids or go to the grocery store that she can offer something that will improve their lives, too.
It might just be easier to offer rebates on bunk beds and stack local libraries with books about the joys of minimalism.