As Montreal prepares for its traditional moving day, the housing crunch reached alarming new heights — with hundreds of households still searching for a roof over their heads and advocates calling for urgent action. “We see a lot of people who are low income and very vulnerable tenants struggling to figure out how to pay rents,” said Gary Saxe, executive director of Project Genesis, a housing rights organization based in Côte-des-Neiges. “And every year is getting worse as rents go higher and higher.” Saxe said rents have gone up “astronomically” over the last few years — and it’s not just a problem on July 1, but all year round. According to the City of Montreal, about 270 households remain without housing secured, including 35 who are expected to need emergency shelter on Tuesday. Saxe said the current crisis is a result of multiple factors that have compounded over several years, including consistent above-average rent hikes approved by Quebec’s housing tribunal (TAL) and significantly low vacancy rates — especially in more affordable units. “It’s a structural problem, and it’s forcing people to hold onto whatever apartment they can, because they know they won’t find anything else they can afford,” he said. A recent report from Statistics Canada showed asking rents in Montreal have risen nearly 71 per cent since 2019. The city’s vacancy rate in 2024 sat at just 1.5 per cent, and competition for lower-priced apartments remains fierce. For Montrealer Egor Matveev, the search for housing came at the worst possible time. Matveev and his girlfriend had just moved into a one-bedroom apartment in St-Henri in early June, after three years of long-distance dating. The move marked the beginning of a new chapter: he was moving into his first apartment, she had relocated from Ontario, they’d packed a U-Haul, and their move-in date fell just before their anniversary on Fête nationale. But on the weekend of June 14, while they were out of town, they got a call from a friend: their apartment building had caught fire. “When we saw videos of the fire, my girlfriend started crying, and I was really emotional too,” Matveev said. “It was terrible to see just how big the fire was.” The roof of the building’s top floor — where their apartment was — had collapsed. “Everything we had in there was effectively gone,” Matveev told CTV News. Still, he considered himself “one of the lucky ones,” with a stable job, temporary housing arrangement at his mother’s home, and insurance that helped cover the cost of an Airbnb. Finding a new place, he said, was nonetheless gruelling. The couple visited around 30 apartments before finally signing a lease just days ago for a unit in Verdun. He said several listings were snatched up quickly, but what struck him most was the lack of support from the city. “It’s a tragedy the way our cities — all over the country — deal with housing,” Matveev said. “The kind of rules they set up, the way land is allocated, and the way housing is built — there are so many barriers, and they cave to pressure not to build what’s needed like social housing like social ones.” In response to the growing housing crisis, the City of Montreal has urged anyone in need to call 311 to be connected with available resources. Projet Montréal promises new measures At a press conference Monday, Luc Rabouin, leader of Projet Montréal said the party is proposing a $100-million guarantee fund aimed at helping non-profits purchase rental buildings and preserve affordability. “We will guarantee from 10 to 15 per cent of the amount of the banking loan to be sure [these organizations] receive the money they need,” he said. Rabouin estimates this could protect up to 5,000 affordable housing units from rent hikes. The party also wants the Office municipal d’habitation de Montréal (OMHM) to intervene more quickly in eviction cases and proactively reach out to displaced tenants. But housing advocates like Saxe warned that those efforts, while welcome, are not enough. “What’s really needed — the real solution — is investment in social housing,” he said. “It’s the only way to give people who can’t afford market rents a chance to live in dignity and in decent conditions.” For now, he added, the situation is likely to keep getting worse unless bold action is taken. “We’re going to see that continue unless two things happen: Quebec changes the way that the TAL calculates rent increases,” Saxe said. “And, again, that more social housing comes.”
