Concrete measures to make housing accessible in the Outaouais region
Concrete measures to make housing accessible in the Outaouais region
The housing crisis, recognized by Québec solidaire for many years, must be taken seriously everywhere in Quebec, but especially in Outaouais.
Candidates from the five Outaouais constituencies are proposing clear commitments for the region. These measures are urgent since the City of Gatineau has the most expensive rents in the province and the rural areas of Petite Nation, Pontiac and Haute-Gatineau are experiencing precarious access to housing.
According to Mariève Forest, candidate from Hull, “With a vacancy rate of 10% for newly built housing, but less than 1% for affordable housing, we can clearly see that the housing crisis is above all a crisis of affordability in Gatineau.”
The candidate for the Gatineau constituency, Emmanuelle Tremblay, deplores the meteoric increase in what is called invisible homelessness: “Particularly in the Vallée-de-la-Gatineau, the number of people without fixed housing has exploded under the mandate of the CAQ and the Christine Fréchette team.”
Bianca Baldo, candidate in Pontiac, denounces the unequal impact of the housing crisis in the region: “In Outaouais, the housing crisis does not affect everyone in the same way. Young people cannot afford to leave the family nest and the elderly are being pushed out of homes they have lived in for decades. Immigrant families come up against landlords who flatly refuse to rent them accommodation, while large families cannot find accommodation large enough.” The Françoise David law provides these people with a degree of protection, but other measures are necessary.
In Pontiac, the housing crisis takes a different form from that observed in Gatineau. The rural area has few rental accommodations, and people looking for an apartment have a limited choice. A portrait from the Outaouais Development Observatory highlights that available housing is few in number, rarely posted and sometimes in poor condition. The MRC itself reports that access to decent housing constitutes a “complex and critical” situation.
The situation is all the more worrying as the population of Pontiac is aging and a portion of households must devote a significant proportion of their income to housing. According to the regional portrait, some households spend more than 30%, and sometimes up to 50%, of their income on housing costs. The supply of social housing also remains insufficient and the portrait noted the absence of housing non-profit organizations in the MRC.
Québec solidaire will quickly put forward concrete measures for tenants such as freezing rents to inflation. Likewise, Outaouais will have its fair share of the approximately 50,000 off-market housing units promised by the solidarity team in a first mandate. Ultimately, the objective is to stabilize price increases by ensuring that the market is made up of at least 20% social and community housing. To achieve this objective, Québec solidaire will only include 25% of the capital gain, rather than 50%, of owners who sell their buildings to non-profit organizations or to the Housing Office to turn them into off-market housing.
It is important to remember that, for the Outaouais solidarity team, the housing crisis and the homelessness crisis are closely linked. It is for this reason that the solidarity groups plan to reserve part of the new social housing for people experiencing homelessness by integrating community support.
