Housing “blocked by city”: La Presse
La Presse is following a theme lately about housing, social and otherwise. André Dubuc has a piece Saturday saying that while the city says it wants more housing, it has blocked many housing projects. Examples are given, although not the specific reason the city had problems with each one. Dubuc ends with a flourish, interviewing Benoit Dorais, reminding us that it’s the city, not developers, that’s responsible for overseeing its evolution.
Le Devoir consoles us with the knowledge that it’s still more difficult to find an affordable apartment in Toronto than in Montreal.
DeWolf 15:47 on 2022-12-03 Permalink
Dorais has a point that there is still a ton of housing getting built in Montreal. We’re far from the situation of some big American cities where there’s very little new construction except for the occasional small-scale luxury project.
But there are certainly some egregious examples here. The worst one is definitely Pointe-Claire, which would rather have a huge parking lot than housing next to a rapid transit station. It also boggles my mind as to why the Plateau would rather have a vacant lot on Park Avenue than student housing. Some misguided attempt to keep the McGill Ghetto from being even more studenty?
Don’t forget there are also cases where the city has worked hand-in-hand with developers to come up with projects that would add a lot more housing, only to have them quashed by neighbourhood opposition. The project next to the canal and on Eleanor come to mind.