The Manoir Lafontaine building on Papineau has been sold to a nonprofit which is going to convert it to “affordable housing”. As with the previous owners, the tenants will have to leave while the building is renovated, and I wonder how many will be able to afford to move back in at an “affordable” $1,000 per month.
Updates from May, 2023 Toggle Comment Threads | Keyboard Shortcuts
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Kate
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Kate
A girl of 17 who caused the death of 79‑year‑old pedestrian Carolina Zollo‑Braca in 2021 testified Wednesday that she had never driven before “except at the arcades.” The trial is not hers: it’s Jean Berbens Petit, who was in the car at the time, who’s up on a charge of dangerous driving causing death.
People on Reddit have dissected the story told here, asking who goes to arcades any more, and also how do you rent a car over Snapchat? Relevant questions.
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Kate
SOPFEU has extended its campfire ban to Montreal, although I don’t know where open fires are allowed in town anyway. I hope this won’t mean more clamping down on homeless people.
mare
Maybe also no coal barbecues in parks anymore. Some parks have dedicated spaces for them, in other parks people just put them in the grass. And I remember seeing fire pits with a stone circle somewhere in a nature park, but I don’t remember where, neither if they were officially sanctioned.
Kate
There have always been issues with campfires in Mount Royal park. Luckily so far nobody has set fire to the mountain forest, but if you walk around in the leafier parts of the park you’ll sometimes see fire pits. You may also see other things you don’t want to see, mind you.
MarcG
There are tons of makeshift firepits along the riverside in Verdun – some more permanent and safer than others. Came across a very unsafe one that had been abandoned and left quite heavily smoldering a few days ago and spent 10 minutes putting it out.
Joey
Saw a guy grilling in Jeanne Mance Park last evening. The smoke totally overwhelmed half the tennis courts for about 10 minutes (plus all the smog already hazing around). Anyway, the much more annoying bit was the DJ who decided the park needs house music.
Shawn Goldwater
I seem to smell fire here in Mile End. Anyone else?
Shawn Goldwater
Yes the first seems to be very close by (Saint Urbain?). My condo filled with this yellowish smoke and my neighbour and me are forced to close our windows.
You better believe I am off to the office now!
Kate
shawn, the fire department tweets any major fire, and right now it’s got one at St‑Urbain and Laurier.
Shawn Goldwater
Yes that’s it. Thanks.
Funny there was no huge plume in the sky but a very dense bank of yellow smoke close to the ground.
I think that I am going to to stick around to see if I can reopen the windows later.
Sitting in Première moisson now and I smell of smoke, like I have been at a campfire.
Always funny when there is a fire close by to you and you think what could have been….Shawn Goldwater
Still burning too! Stubborn thing…
Kate
Shawn, I linked a news story on the fire above.
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Kate
A man was stabbed on Atwater early Wednesday by someone police say was a relative. Well, you know what family reunions can be like.
Freddy G
I have absolutely no idea why you keep making childish remarks about violence. The last one you commented on was a joke about a tree where the young driver has now died. Stop it, please.
CE
Chill Freddy. It’s a nice day, go outside.
EmilyG
It seems that yeah, sometimes the remarks can be rather flippant, considering the situations.
Tim S.
Black humour is a thing.
JP
It’s Kate’s blog. I would say, if it’s not your cup of tea, you can choose not to visit.
MarcG
Or provide her with convincing reasons why she should change her behavior.
richard
Childish? Yikes. It is fair to object but why the mean tone?
Janet
I would not go to someone’s house and tell them how to act. If I found their behaviour too unacceptable, I might decide not to visit them anymore.
CE
I enjoy Kate’s occasional dark humour and raise no objections.
walkerp
I lol’ed. Keep it up, Kate. The light editorializing on what is otherwise efficient and factual is what adds the spice of personality to this great site.
Kate
Love you guys. In a 21st-century-appropriate manner, of course.
DeWolf
I chuckled.
Ian
Black humour is like food, not everybody gets it.
Keep being you, Kate. This isn’t a corporate news channel, I’ve always been a follower for the spin.
JaneyB
@Ian, De Wolf etc – Same here.
Tim
I have learned to ignore Kate’s flippancy (great description @EmilyG) over the years because of the service that the site provides.
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Kate
Brandon McIntyre, who pleaded guilty last month to the fatal beating of his girlfriend Rebekah Harry in 2021, was sentenced to 14 years Tuesday. He avoided life imprisonment when the charge was reduced from murder to manslaughter.
He’s concurrently doing time for beating up another woman as well.
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Kate
A teacher who had some disobliging things to say about Islam in a Côte‑des‑Neiges high school ethics and religion class has been transferred to another school, although some parents think the response should have been more severe.
I can hear the Journal’s columnists sharpening their pencils already.
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Kate
A judge has ruled that the La Tulipe venue on Papineau will have to reduce its decibel output after a real estate investor who owns the adjoining property put in a noise complaint. The twist in the tale is that his building should never have been zoned residential anyway, but it’s too late now for La Tulipe, since the judge clearly decided property rights are more important than cultural assets.
Joey
I was going to make a snide remark about the Plateau leadership, but this article reminded me that even the best-intended, hardest-working elected officials have their hands full at the best of times: https://www.lapresse.ca/actualites/grand-montreal/2023-05-31/ville-de-montreal/un-cadre-vendait-du-pot-a-ses-collegues.php
walkerp
Cultural vampires suck their victims dry and then move on to fresh ones.
Blork 19:39 on 2023-05-31 Permalink
Isn’t $1000 a month considered “affordable” these days? Just tossing some numbers around here… when I moved to Montreal minimum wage was about $5/hour and an “affordable” apartment was about $325 a month. Now minimum wage is triple that ($15/hr, I think) and $1000 for rent is about triple the rent from back then. So it’s about the same relatively speaking.
That’s not to negate the problems of high rent that we’re experiencing now. But those high rents are like $1500 for a shitty 3-1/2 or over $2k for a grim 4-1/2, which are real things I’m seeing out there. By comparison, $1000 seems pretty affordable.
It would suck if that $1000 was for a 300 square foot studio, but I think the units in that building are mostly 3-1/2s. (Not sure about that; I stand to be corrected.)
Spi 20:49 on 2023-05-31 Permalink
$5.6 million grant from the city and not a single additional unit of affordable housing was created and that’s note even taking into account the renovation costs. I suspect the majority of the tenants, like in all HLM/public housing skew older and will hang on to these appartments until they eventually need to move into a CHSLD. There’s a serious generational inequality problem underlying the housing crisis.
Ian 20:52 on 2023-05-31 Permalink
15.25 an hour is 30, 500 a year, or 2541 before taxes. The gold standard for affordable housing is a quarter of your monthly before-tax earnings, or 635.25.
I’m not sure if you can even rent a garage inthe Plateau for $635.
That said, checking on padmapper, a 1 bed anywhere even remotely central runs about 1250-1300 these days on the cheap end.
Michael 22:34 on 2023-05-31 Permalink
Something doesn’t make sense.
$19M to buy the building + $38M in renovation costs at $400K per unit to repair???
Ephraim 22:58 on 2023-05-31 Permalink
@Spi – I don’t understand taking over older buildings for affordable housing at all. A new build is more energy efficient, can be purpose built, can even be more space efficient. But you can also use geothermal for heating/cooling. Which would lower the total cost to live there, per square foot. Let the rich live in the beautiful energy inefficient buildings and take the money and build more efficient buildings.
JaneyB 08:01 on 2023-06-01 Permalink
The most current rental rates (2022) according to CMHC here: https://www03.cmhc-schl.gc.ca/hmip-pimh/en/TableMapChart/TableCategory?geographyType=MetropolitanMajorArea&geographyId=1060&categoryLevel1=Primary%20Rental%20Market&categoryLevel2=Average%20Rent%20%28%24%29
The data for 17 Canadian cities here, rents, types, vacancy etc: https://www.cmhc-schl.gc.ca/en/professionals/housing-markets-data-and-research/housing-data/data-tables/rental-market/rental-market-report-data-tables
Summary: Average for Mtl is about 900$ for 3.5 and 1000$ for 4.5. Downtown and new condos are more expensive. Affordable for most but minimum wage basically needs roommates.
Blork 09:25 on 2023-06-01 Permalink
OK, so I’m not far off by the stats that Janey points to. Bear in mind that “affordable rent” doesn’t mean “rock bottom rent for the poorest of people,” it means “affordable rent for average people.”
Average income for Montreal is difficult to determine because there are so many variables and so many unreliable reports, but a quick scan puts it somewhere between $40K and $50K, in which case a rent of $1000 a month is affordable. If it’s a couple and they’re both earning average incomes then it’s very affordable. Sure, we’d all love to pay only 10% of our income to rent but let’s be reasonable and realistic here.
The other thing I want to say is that I’m always skeptical about “average rent” values. For one thing, those numbers factor in large swaths of low rents in undesireable locations, plus shitty unlivable buildings, and people who have “grandfathered” low rent because they’ve been in the same apartment for 25 years. Janey cites $900 as average for a 3-1/2, but I suspect any one of us would have a hard time actually finding a decent 3-1/2 available anything near that price. So $1000 for a newly renovated 3-1/2 at a pretty good location on the Plateau right across from Parc Lafontaine? I’d say that’s pretty reasonable and affordable.
Affordable for the poorest of the poor? No, but that’s not what they’re claiming. And minimum wage workers have pretty much always needed roommates unless they choose to live in very dire or tiny apartments, or in some far-flung neighbourhood.
Blork 09:32 on 2023-06-01 Permalink
…and again, the above should not be seen as some kind of denial that there’s a housing crisis or that rents are high. If anything it’s the opposite. The last time I paid rent it was $850 a month for a 4-1/2 (2 bedroom) and that seemed steep. That was 2001. The same place is probably $1800 now, and I cannot imagine paying that.
Kate 10:02 on 2023-06-01 Permalink
The other thing I want to say is that I’m always skeptical about “average rent” values. For one thing, those numbers factor in large swaths of low rents in undesireable locations
Funny, because I always suspect the opposite – that the numbers given are biased by the inclusion of high‑end and brand new buildings with sky‑high rents. It’s seemed clear to me over the last five years or so that it was in the interest of developers and property consortiums to normalize, in the public mind, paying upwards of $1000 for a hole in the wall.
Joey 10:19 on 2023-06-01 Permalink
Yeah, average (mean) is really not very helpful here – big-picture policymakers should be concerned about the distribution of rents: are there sufficient apartments at the low-end of the scale to ensure that lower-income individuals can afford to live where they want/need to? This is basically impossible without a lease registry, which the province absolutely could and should implement ASAP – I imagine lease information could be easily collected via income tax filings, just like the CRA recently started collecting information about home sales.
As far as this building goes, it sounds like the owners (Shiller/Kornbluth) were hoping to sell for lots more, something like $28M, but couldn’t given how dilapidated the building is, and so settled for this sale, which is probably the best case – the city kicks in some money to a long-standing NGO that seems to have a track record in managing ‘affordable’ rental properties rather than let the building fall apart only to be rebuilt as high-end, park-view condos.
Kevin 10:23 on 2023-06-01 Permalink
An issue with new builds is that they are designed in such a way that makes it ludicrously expensive to include multi-bedroom units.
Wide buildings, with units on either side of a long hallway leading to a central elevator, means a multi-bedroom apartment has to be very large because each bedroom needs a window.
So in that aspect, taking over an older building and updating the insulation/heating/cooling can make more sense on a cost per square metre basis.
Blork 11:28 on 2023-06-01 Permalink
Regarding “average” rents, Kate has a point but I suppose it depends on the source of the statistics. Similar to “average salary” the data sources can be very skewed one way or the other, which is why it’s hard to find something that seems reliable. And as I think about it, I used to have the same concern as Kate (that the “average rent” was skewed towards the higher range). I’m not sure when my thinking reversed. But again, it depends on the source. If someone is arguing that rents are not as high as people think then yeah, they will use the numbers skewed towards the lower range.
Cadichon 11:53 on 2023-06-01 Permalink
Well everyone’s source for average rent is CMHC’s annual survey. It’s as reliable as can be, with the caveat that it omits buildings with less than 3 rental units (so duplexes and triplexes with owner-occupant are excluded).
Average rent for the island of Montreal, as of october 2022, stands at 1010 $ for a 2 bedroom. According to CMHC’s data, people who’ve signed a lease last year are paying around 15% above average rent. So, yes, average rent is skewed downward because of long time renters.
Blork 13:16 on 2023-06-01 Permalink
Cadichon said “It’s as reliable as can be, with the caveat that it omits buildings with less than 3 rental units (so duplexes and triplexes with owner-occupant are excluded).”
…that’s a pretty significant portion of Montreal’s rental market that’s being excluded!
SMD 14:09 on 2023-06-01 Permalink
The main problem with the CMHC “average rents” is that they are averages of how much current tenants are paying, not a reflection of actual market prices. Somebody who has had the same lease for over a decade is paying much less than what somebody who is looking at a similar unit next door today would be paying. A more helpful study is the one done by the RCLALQ which scrapes Kijiji ads in different cities to find the true current market prices (and their disparity compared to the CMHC prices). Link to their summary, which also has a PDF of the full report: https://rclalq.qc.ca/en/2020/06/enquete-prix-des-logements-une-flambee-des-loyers-sevit-au-quebec/.