Montreal: 60,000 Housing Units Short

Montreal needs 60 thousand units to address the housing shortage. What’s contributing to this shortage and how can we address it as soon as possible? 

Local 514 investigates Airbnb, renovictions, the hoarding of housing and government policies prioritizing housing as a commodity. 

Montreal and the province have enacted regulations and laws to regulate Airbnb and prevent these short-term rentals from existing in certain areas of the city. Airbnb owners must obtain a license through Revenue Quebec, charging hosts between $50-75 to obtain a license. Revenue Quebec has been issuing fines to illegal Airbnbs, but with only 25 inspectors province-wide, they can’t keep up with the estimated 100 thousand listing province-wide. In Montreal, approximately 85% of Airbnb’s are illegal. 

Gavin Armitage-Ackerman, a student in Urban Planning and journalist covering housing told Local 514 that there are about 12 thousand Airbnbs in Montreal and 6 thousand of these are full time listings.

"Lets say 2% [of our housing is put towards] Airbnb, thats what the vacancy rate is," said Armitage-Ackerman. "Take that many homes off market from airbnb and thats it."

City councillor Craig Sauvé told Local 514 putting Airbnbs back on the rental market will help, but it’s not the only solution.

"We have to build more housing – [build] social housing" said Sauvé.

Social housing is under threat in Montreal and the rest of the province, since the CAQ government ended the social housing program AccèsLogis in February. Social housing will now be built under the new program, the Societé d’habitation du Quebec. This program was announced by the province in 2021, but no housing has been built under it since.

"Quebec killed AccèsLogis, this program provided 100% social housing. 

But that's not the only barrier to affordable housing in Montreal and the rest of the province. New regulations by the Quebec government allows for-profit developers to charge higher rents. 

Stefani Balinksy, head of content strategy at Loans Canada told Local 514 new rental builds will be exempted from rental limits for 5 years.

This means developers will be exempted from following increases recommended by the The Tribunal administratif du logement, which supervises Quebec’s residential rental market . 

The Tribunal administratif du logement (TAL), which supervises Quebec’s residential rental market, recommended landlords to increase the rent by 2.3% this year due to the rising cost of living. 

Armitage-Ackerman said that landlords are using other methods to raise the rent. In Quebec, once a tenant has left the unit, a landlord doesn't have to abide by the TAL's recommended rental limits. Instead, they can raise the rent as much as they want before a new tenant comes in. He said landlords can "renovict" tenants – which is evict tenants on the permise of conducting a renovation on the unit or building. But Armitage-Ackerman said some landlords use this to get tenants out, never conduct the renovation and then raise the rent beyond TAL recommendations. He said the province must assess if landlords are actually renovating after a renoviction, but this is not being done. 

There’s vast inequalities between homeowners and renters. Across Canada, home owners have an average double the income of renters and  in some Canadian provinces multiple-property owners own 30-40% of stock. Approximately 3 out of every 10 residential homes in the country are owned by individuals owning multiple properties.

Armitage-Ackerman said that concentrating the ownership of housing to small group of people is not good, it makes housing treated as investment and not human right.

Geordie Dent, the executive director of the Federation of Metro Tenants’ Associations told Local 514 that with the equity someone can make off of a house, they can buy another house and continue to capitalize off of it. As a result, he said this has created a phenomenon of hoarding housing.

With landlords dictating the state of our rental market, through illegal Airbnbs, renovictions and treating housing as a profitable sector instead of a human right – how can we address the issue of NEEDING 60 thousand vacant units in Montreal right now? 

"We've got to build more," said Sauvé. "We don't wanna build on farmland and wetlands, because of food insecurity and climate change – but we have to build." He said we have to densify urban areas in Montreal to address the need for more units.