City relies on developers for social housing
A good piece from The Rover examines how the city has begun to rely on developers to dig it out of the housing crisis, even though the crisis is at least partly their doing. But the three levels of government are also answerable.
Nicholas 17:22 on 2026-01-22 Permalink
What part of the crisis is the developers’ doing? We don’t expect businesses to sell products for less than it costs to produce them, and you can’t build housing cheaply enough for people who have no (or almost no) income. There needs to be a subsidy, and the city keeps not coming through with that. The only way to solve this problem is for government to raise revenues and build housing or for them to let others do so easily and in large enough numbers that it causes housing prices to fall. Making it harder for people to build housing, and also not building housing yourself, is not going to solve this crisis.
SMD 18:02 on 2026-01-22 Permalink
The current main driver of homelessness in Montreal, according to all reports, is housing unaffordability. It is not addictions, mental health crises or unemployment; rather, the majority of unhoused people have simply being pushed out of their housing by rent hikes and renovictions. Real estate promoters who buy run-down but affordable buildings in order to “optimize” their rents are part of the problem. As are the large financial firms who invest heavily in Canadian real estate as a speculative vehicle. As are the condo promoters who can’t be arsed to build the required units of affordable and social housing and just consider the fine as the cost of doing business. And of course, all three levels of government who pass the buck on the human right to housing and would like nothing better than to have the private market solve the problems that it has itself created.
su 18:24 on 2026-01-22 Permalink
“Social housing requirements from the city, according to Blouin, are disconnected from the realities on the ground and also demand higher standards and regulations than they do for high-end condos. ”
I am curious what exactly are the higher standards and regulations? Does he mean accessibility things like ramps, wider hallways, specific counter heights ?
su 18:32 on 2026-01-22 Permalink
For over a decade, historically low interest rates acted as “rocket fuel” for the real estate market.
Leverage: Low rates allowed developers and Real Estate Investment Trusts (REITs) to borrow massive amounts of capital at almost no cost. This allowed them to outbid local families and non-profits for land and existing buildings.
Asset Price Inflation: When borrowing is cheap, the value of the asset (land/buildings) rises. Developers focused on high-margin luxury condos because the returns on “affordable” housing couldn’t compete with the yields demanded by their investors.
R T 19:38 on 2026-01-22 Permalink
“The current main driver of homelessness in Montreal, according to all reports, is housing unaffordability. It is not addictions, mental health crises or unemployment; rather, the majority of unhoused people have simply being pushed out of their housing by rent hikes and renovictions.”
If some people don’t have homes, and the vacancy rate—the pool of available homes—is at or near a record low, how is the rent level responsible for the overall number of homeless individuals (rather than who specifically is homeless)? If rent were lower, they could afford a home, but what would happen to the person who currently lives in that home? (And how do you get the current resident to leave that home?)
There is no massive pool of available homes—vacancy rates are very low—and, even if there were, it can’t be that owners are holding them off the market because rents are too high and they’d rent them out if only rents were lower.
(Parts of the answer to “what would happen to the person who currently lives in that home?” is that young adults would live with their parents for even longer and that some people would never be able to live in Montreal at all, but these are hardly desirable outcomes. And rents are definitely a determinant of who becomes homeless—West Virginia isn’t short of addicts but it also does not have much homelessness, visible or invisible—but ultimately the math problem that x many homes can hold at most y many people is inescapable.)
SMD 21:59 on 2026-01-22 Permalink
The vacancy rate for the island of Montreal was 3.1% in 2025, according to the CMHC report. But as noted by CityNews, “the report highlights two concurrent trends in 2025. More expensive apartments renting between $1,900 and $2,800 per month posted a vacancy rate of around six per cent. Meanwhile, more affordable units renting below $1,300 a month had a vacancy rate of just 1.5 per cent.” As su posted above, there is a glut of over-priced high-market condos that bring in more money for developers. In short, there are lots of empty units! They just aren’t affordable.
As for the idea that owners wouldn’t leave units empty, Vancouver’s experience in the last two decades would prove otherwise. When housing is seen as a speculative investment, instead of a home, the logic of the market takes over. Why rent out low now when you can let it sit empty (maybe have a management firm run it as an AirBnB) and wait for an upturn in the economy?
bob 06:08 on 2026-01-23 Permalink
It is reminiscent of the classic Tammany ring cartoon: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/9/9e/Tammany_Ring%2C_Nast_crop.jpg
R T 11:46 on 2026-01-23 Permalink
“The vacancy rate for the island of Montreal was 3.1% in 2025, according to the CMHC report. But as noted by CityNews, “the report highlights two concurrent trends in 2025. More expensive apartments renting between $1,900 and $2,800 per month posted a vacancy rate of around six per cent.””
The vacancy rate for $1,900-$2,800 on the island was 4.9%; 5.9% is for the CMA. (I assume that switching from using a vacancy rate for the island when it was higher than that for the CMA to using a vacancy rate for the CMA when it was higher than that for the island without disclosing that they were not the same geography was an oversight and not a deliberate choice to be misleading.)
Moving from a 2.0% vacancy rate to a 3.1% vacancy rate (on the island; CMA: 2.1% -> 2.9%) is a substantial improvement—an over 50% increase in available units in one year and no longer near a record low—but still means only one in 32 apartments is unoccupied with no pending lease or ongoing renovations. That’s not a glut!
Tim 17:18 on 2026-01-23 Permalink
“The current main driver of homelessness in Montreal, according to all reports, is housing unaffordability. It is not addictions, mental health crises or unemployment; rather, the majority of unhoused people have simply being pushed out of their housing by rent hikes and renovictions.”
Do you have any data to back up your assertion? This link provides a lot of evidence how you cannot simply condense homelessness down to a single cause: https://www.dunhamhouse.ca/blog/what-are-the-key-factors-contributing-to-homelessness