Ottawa plan to build rental units in N.D.G. called poor use of $71M

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Housing advocates are questioning the federal government’s $71-million loan for a privately built apartment complex in Montreal’s Côte-des-Neiges—Notre-Dame-de-Grâce borough, calling it an unacceptable response to the housing crisis.

The housing ministry said Thursday it will invest in Exal NDG, a 207-unit project, through its Apartment Construction Loan Program.

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Monthly rents in the apartment complex start at $1,080 for a studio and $1,500 for a one-bedroom. That’s more than 30 per cent above market for C.D.N.-N.D.G., according to 2023 data from the Canada Mortgage and Housing Corp. Also included in the project are two- and three-bedroom units, which range between 12 per cent and 20 per cent above market value.

Steve Mackinnon, the Labour and Seniors minister, who announced the project at the construction site on St-Jacques St., near West Broadway St., said the prices follow federal guidelines for affordable housing.

Under the loan program’s affordability requirements, a minimum of 20 per cent of the units must have rents at or below 30 per cent of the median household income in the surrounding census area.

One Montreal-based housing justice group, Front d’action populaire en réaménagement urbain (FRAPRU), questioned whether the affordability criteria makes sense.

“Affordability is calculated based on the income of owners and tenants, even if they are intended … for rent! Yet the median income of owner households is twice as high as that of renters,” Véronique Laflamme from FRAPRU wrote to The Gazette. “In the Montreal metropolitan area, for example, the median income of owner households was $105,000 at the last census, while that of all renter households was $52,000.”

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FRAPRU wrote that this investment is a waste of government funds and finds it “unacceptable that the government should finance private developers … who in the end will be the only ones to pocket the profits.” The $71 million, Laflamme wrote, “would be much better spent on social housing.”

Mackinnon said the government’s National Housing Strategy “foresees constructing all kinds of housing units,” including housing co-operatives and low-income housing in addition to affordable rental housing.

McGill architecture professor Avi Friedman, who founded the university’s Affordable Homes Program, said the creation of rental housing is a “welcome gesture,” but that lowering the rent price on new builds is not so straightforward.

“There are external reasons that the cost (of construction) is up beyond the government’s control,” Friedman said. “When you take the cost of land, the cost of infrastructure. This is the pipes and so on. And the roads and the construction cost of a unit. It exceeded people’s ability to afford the bare minimum.”

Another McGill architecture professor, Ipek Türeli, said government funds could instead be used to rehabilitate existing non-commodified housing units that are out of commission. “For example, the space behind the YMCA in N.D.G., which was slated for social housing development, is still waiting for investment,” Türeli told The Gazette.

Friedman noted that the government might be motivated to invest in private housing to delegate the responsibility of property management. “Once you build, for lack of a better word, you’re stuck with it. You need to look after it. It is your property and your liability.”

Exal NDG would not have been possible without the federal loan, according to Stéphane L’Espérance, president of Construgep, the construction company behind the project.

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