Côte-des-Neiges groups demand 2,500 social housing units for Blue Bonnets site

Around 2,500 households are currently on a waiting list for social housing in Côte-des-Neiges, community groups say.

People hold signs at a protest event calling for social housing on Blue Bonnets land in Montreal on Tuesday, July 5, 2022. Photo by John Mahoney /Montreal Gazette

With pickets in hand, dozens of Côte-des-Neiges residents gathered at a community center on Tuesday to draw attention to the lack of social housing in the area.

The protest was organized by local community groups to demand that a minimum of 2,500 social housing units be incorporated into the former Blue Bonnets race track development on Jean-Talon St., west of the Décarie Expressway, as well as for governments municipal and provincial. to ensure that stalled social housing projects in the neighborhood can move forward.

“It is essential that the Quebec government invest in social housing for these projects to come to fruition,” said Catherine Lussier, a community organizer with the Front d’action populaire en réaménagement urbain (FRAPRU), who attended Tuesday’s event in support of local groups. . “She didn’t do her job of delivering the 15,000 units she (she promised) and financed even fewer new units in the last four years. That is unacceptable…it has to change now.”

Catherine Lussier of the housing rights group FRAPRU speaks at a protest event calling for social housing on Blue Bonnets land in Montreal on Tuesday, July 5, 2022. Photo by John Mahoney /Montreal Gazette

Prior to her re-election, Montreal Mayor Valérie Plante had pledged to turn the Blue Bonnets-Hippodrome site into an “ecological neighborhood” that includes 7,500 housing units, of which 2,000 would be social and another 2,000 affordable.

But according to the Table Habitation Sociale and the Corporation de développement communautaire de Côte-des-Neiges, some 2,500 families are currently on the waiting list for social housing and, in a neighborhood with an overrepresentation of unsanitary living conditions, more than 12 percent of households, a total of 4,235, spend more than 80 percent of their income on housing. They estimate that nearly 80 percent of Côte-des-Neiges households are renters, noting that more than 54 percent of the population comes from racialized communities.

Darby MacDonald, a community organizer with Project Genesis, said the group, an organization in the area committed to social justice, has been calling for social housing at the Blue Bonnets site since 1991. Other groups said the same thing.

“I mean, for more than 30 years there have been terrible problems in the Côte-des-Neiges that need to be responded to,” MacDonald said. “Unfortunately, these housing problems in our neighborhood have not gotten better in those 30 years, they have only continued to get worse.”

According to the groups, two social housing projects that were approved to help respond to neighborhood needs, Bates and Westbury, lack the funds to move forward following cuts to the program by the Quebec government.

Last week, a spokesman for the city’s executive committee said Montreal received just $30 million of the $265 million it requested from Quebec to fund backlogged housing projects.

Amira Bensahli, a community organizer with Femmes du monde de Côte-des-Neiges, said consultations are currently underway for the Blue Bonnets site and Tuesday’s event was to clarify the social housing needs of the community.

“Since plans are currently being made, we want to be clear,” Bensahli said.

MacDonald said Project Genesis has heard from many people in the area who are struggling to find affordable housing that meets their needs this Moving Day, and that there is an “absolute climate of fear” among renters.

“Landlords are leaving tenants in absolutely terrible conditions with unsanitary housing, very small apartments with extreme rent increases,” he said. “But if tenants try to… speak out to assert their rights against these landlords, they risk being evicted from some of the last truly affordable apartments in Montreal.”

He added that while Côte-des-Neiges has been underfunded for years, Blue Bonnets remains a “beacon of hope for so many low-income people in our neighborhood.”

“As the last great vacant lot in all of Montreal, it has the ability to not only rectify the ultra-long list of…families waiting for social housing right now in our district, but also create an extension of what makes Côte – des-Neiges an incredible neighborhood, a welcoming and diverse place,” he said.

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