Empty buildings, none fit for habitation
The city possesses 80 empty buildings but none of them is in a fit state to house people without a lot of work.
I wonder how strict the “normes” are. Surely there are people who’d be happy to have a roof over their head through the winter, even in a building that’s run down?
MarcG 13:25 on 2023-11-28 Permalink
Not if said roof caves in on you.
Kate 13:43 on 2023-11-28 Permalink
True. But I was thinking of something less drastic, like older bathrooms or inaesthetic old tile floors.
Ephraim 14:05 on 2023-11-28 Permalink
There was a podcast this week that delved into some of the “costs” and why everything related to building costs so much. See https://freakonomics.com/podcast/why-is-it-so-hard-and-expensive-to-build-anything-in-america/ if you are interested (it’s US oriented, but many of the salient points certainly apply to Canada.)
The short part of it is that all these consultations, regulations and requirements are essentially increasing the cost of building, while the industry isn’t innovating enough. Sure, we aren’t talking about the requirements that are needed, like a building being structurally sound, but all the NIMBY and the city requirements that have nothing to do with safety. For example, preserving 1 story buildings, where if you knocked down together that were side by side, you could likely house 6 households.Or even the problem they are having in the QdeS, where people move in and then complain about the noise, when it’s the house that needs to be soundproof because the business was existing. This increases costs all the way around.
mare 14:37 on 2023-11-28 Permalink
Most larger buildings have oil fired heating furnaces. If those haven’t been used or maintained for years they either don’t work or could produce carbon monoxide. And institutional buildings often have big rooms so to do a makeshift conversion to electrical heating will need a major upgrade of the hydro feed and internal wiring. And gosh, there’s asbestos in the walls, now we can’t drill a hole to run a wire. Etc etc.
I’ve lived for 5 years in squats (in the Netherlands where that was somewhat legal) and instead of paying rent we invested part of our money to make gradual improvements. I developed a lot of very useful skills during that time, like plumbing water and gas, and wiring electrical system. However the building owners weren’t liable for anything we did. Also, there weren’t laws that only union/guild members could perform those trades. (We had our work checked by experts, and the electric and gas company did a check before they connected the building(s) to their network.)
Montreal will never allow people to live as we did at the time, even though I had a blast and lived very comfortable. They could implement an anti-long-term-vacant-building law, but since the overlap in the venn-diagram of real estate developers and politicians isn’t exactly empty, that will be a tough call, and will generate a lots of lawsuits.
Joey 15:54 on 2023-11-28 Permalink
The same twisted logic doesn’t just apply to residential buildings. There may be lots of vacant commercial/office buildings in a particular area, and yet there’s often new construction happening on adjacent lots. It’s often easier to build to spec from zero than to retrofit or renovate a structure that previously suited a similar but still distinct purpose.
Kate 17:29 on 2023-11-28 Permalink
I was thinking, you know how the Camillien Houde city hall created work and improved parks and other municipal fittings during the Depression, it’s a shame that it’s no longer possible for city hall to summon up work gangs and put them to work retrofitting at least some of these vacant buildings for use. They could make it into an apprenticeship scenario where young people could learn construction and renovation skills on the job.
But it couldn’t happen like that now.
CE 18:08 on 2023-11-28 Permalink
It might if we saw unemployment rates like we did during the depression. It’s the opposite right now, there are too many jobs and not enough employees. That all could change very quickly though.
Kate 23:21 on 2023-11-28 Permalink
Is that still the case, CE? I saw a lot of reports about that kind of thing a year ago, not so much now.