Moving Day: Quebec housing bill will only make things worse for tenants, experts say

Quebec hasn’t kept up its end of the bargain by building enough affordable housing for tenants, critics of Bill 31 say.

Published Jun 30, 2023 • Last updated 47 minutes ago • 4 minute read

From 2022 to 2023, the price of rental housing jumped 14 per cent in the census metropolitan area of Montreal. Photo by John Mahoney /Montreal Gazette

Housing advocates and experts are warning that this July 1, Montreal will see more tenants than ever signing leases they can barely afford, moving into apartments that don’t meet their needs, or not finding housing at all. And they say the provincial government’s new housing bill will only make things worse.

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“They should scrap (Bill) 31,” said David Wachsmuth, a professor at McGill University’s School of Urban Planning who holds the Canada Research Chair in urban governance. “The changes in there are, on the whole, going to worsen the problem of access to affordable housing, not improve it.”

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Critics have denounced Bill 31, tabled June 8 and expected to be passed by Christmas, for allowing owners of new rental buildings to ignore rent controls for the first five years of operation, and for doing nothing to prohibit the practice of evicting to turn rental housing into short-term units like Airbnbs. The bill also gives landlords the right to refuse lease transfers for any reason. Currently, rents cannot be hiked when a tenant transfers a lease before it elapses and a landlord needs a valid reason to refuse a lease transfer.

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The CAQ government has signalled its intention to end AccèsLogis, the only provincial program dedicated to providing social housing. Instead, the government launched the Programme d’habitation abordable Québec (PHAQ) last year, which will fund some social housing but also provide financial incentives to the private sector to build “affordable” housing. Critics are concerned the upshot will be less government money going to social housing, where rents are geared to income, and more to privately built affordable housing, where rents are market-based.

“There clearly isn’t enough rental housing available to meet the demand,” Wachsmuth said. “We need more private construction. We need more non-market (government subsidized) housing as well. We need all of it. But unfortunately, those things don’t happen overnight.

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“So in the short term, what it means is that (on July 1) a lot of people will be moving into apartments where they are paying more than they really can afford or settling for a much smaller place than they need for their families. And some people are going to end up without housing at all. We are very much in an affordable housing crisis at the moment.”

Premier François Legault promised in the last election campaign to build 11,700 affordable and social housing units, but in the last budget there was funding for only 1,500 such units across the province.

“The actions we’ve seen from the current government have not demonstrated a real commitment to affordable housing,” Wachsmuth said.

From 2022 to 2023, the price of rental housing jumped 14 per cent in the census metropolitan area of Montreal, and 13.7 per cent in the province as a whole, according to an analysis by the housing advocacy group Regroupement des comités logements et associations de locataires du Québec (RCLALQ). With the vacancy rate hovering at two per cent in Montreal, experts say rents will continue to rise.

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But more than 230,000 rental households in Montreal are already devoting more than 30 per cent of their revenue to rent.

“Those people already have a hard time making ends meet,” said Véronique Laflamme of the housing advocacy group FRAPRU. “Their median revenue is $24,800. So that is a lot, a lot of people who would have a hard time absorbing additional rent hikes.”

She said the government’s incentives for the private sector to build rental housing are not going to help those people.

“If we want to avoid having these difficult July 1sts that we have been seeing in Montreal and all over Quebec for the past four years, we have to act upstream to increase the portion of non-profit housing units that will allow an alternative to too-high rents for all these households that are already having a hard time making ends meet and have to go to the food bank month after month.”

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“We also need an ongoing, dedicated program, whatever you call it … that works for social housing, and right now the PHAQ is not that,” Laflamme said.

She notes that Montreal has said it requires at least 2,000 new social housing units per year, which Laflamme says would not meet the need. “But the Quebec government is not even financing that much for all of Quebec. The last budget announced funding for 1,500 subsidized units through the PHAQ, with 500 reserved to be built by the private sector.”

Under AccèsLogis, Montreal was guaranteed 40 per cent of all new subsidized housing. Under PHAQ, there are no minimum guarantees for Montreal.

“Even if Montreal does get its 40 per cent share, which is not at all a sure thing … it won’t be enough to respond to the crying need,” Laflamme said.

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Bill 31 does contain a few improvements for tenants. For example, the bill would require landlords who evict tenants to compensate them with one month’s rent for each year of continuous residence in the dwelling, to a maximum of 24 months. The current compensation is three months, with the landlord paying all reasonable moving costs. And a tenant who has been evicted can appeal to the Housing Administrative Tribunal, and the onus is on the landlord to prove they have acted in accordance with the law. Currently, the tenant has to prove the reasons given were invalid.

The Montreal Gazette’s attempts to obtain comments from the office of Quebec’s housing minister were unsuccessful.

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