Ken Cervera has lived in his two-bedroom residence in Saint-Henri for 12 years. It is the longest time he is spent in a single place in his grownup life and, in a rustic removed from his household, the residence appears like much more than a house.
“As an immigrant, I am alone right here. All I’ve is my place. It is not simply an residence, it is my dwelling, it is the place I reside, the place I preserve my recollections. It is the place I can simply be,” Cervera, 44, stated Monday afternoon at a neighborhood centre in Montreal’s Sud-Ouest borough, which encompasses Saint-Henri and different traditionally working-class neighbourhoods within the metropolis.
It was Cervera’s first time attending a workshop by his native tenants’ affiliation, the POPIR-Comité Logement. However after Quebec’s rental tribunal, recognized in French because the Tribunal administratif du logement (TAL), made its highest rental improve suggestion in 30 years final week, Cervera needed to be taught extra about his rights and about his neighborhood’s efforts to mitigate the challenges of rising dwelling prices.
Tenants dwelling in properties the place warmth will not be included within the hire might see their hire improve 5.9 per cent, based mostly on the TAL’s calculations of landlords’ bills. The quantity might climb additional, relying on issues like residence upgrades and property taxes.
Ken Cervera, left, and Mohamed Cherrak stick papers with messages calling for a hire hike freeze to a poster at a housing rights workshop in Saint-Henri Monday. (Verity Stevenson/CBC)
Calling for a freeze
Tenants’ rights teams are calling for a hire hike freeze till measures corresponding to a compulsory rental registry and a ceiling on hire hikes are applied. They fear town’s housing prices, recognized for his or her affordability, might quickly catch as much as Toronto and Vancouver, the place the rents have exploded in latest a long time.
“It is not human,” stated Cervera, who has seen his neighbourhood remodel from a poor enclave with outdated structure to a gentrified and hip strip with shiny companies and new rental buildings.
In accordance with POPIR, rents have risen 90 per cent within the Sud-Ouest up to now 10 years, in comparison with 59 per cent throughout Montreal.
“That is large,” stated Catherine Fournier, a neighborhood organizer for POPIR, who was main the workshop Monday. “I do not know the way persons are going to handle,” she stated.
Final 12 months, native tenants have been already calling POPIR saying the TAL’s 2024 hire improve at 4 per cent was too excessive for them.
“Shifting is much more costly so persons are liable to accepting however struggling to pay after which doubtlessly getting evicted if they cannot pay,” she stated.
Catherine Fournier, an organizer for POPIR, a tenants’ rights group in Montreal’s Sud-Ouest borough, held a workshop in Saint-Henri Monday afternoon. (Verity Stevenson/CBC)
That is what Cervera is frightened about — and occasions are tight. Although Cervera, who’s from Mexico, has literature and language levels from a college in Richmond, Va., and from the Université de Montréal, he is struggled to search out employment in his discipline and, currently, has been working for a resort.
He pays $725 a month in hire — low-cost by most requirements — however Cervera’s wage barely covers his month-to-month bills along with the years of pupil loans he nonetheless has to repay.
“I actually did not count on this to be the case, after all of the money and time I invested,” he stated.
WATCH | Advisable hire improve hits historic excessive in Quebec: 
Here is how a lot hire might go up in Quebec in 2025
Tenants dwelling in properties the place warmth will not be included might see their hire improve 5.9 per cent in 2025. That’s based mostly on calculations Quebec’s rental board releases every year, which landlords can use earlier than sending a hire improve discover to a tenant.
Eroding affordability
In accordance with the Canada Mortgage and Housing Company’s fall 2024 rental market report, although Montreal hire progress slowed barely in 2024, “it was nonetheless increased than common wage progress.”
“Consequently, rental market affordability in Montreal continued to erode over the previous 12 months,” the report stated.
The emptiness charge stays low within the metropolis at 2.1 per cent. The typical hire for a two-bedroom residence was up by 6.3 per cent within the “purpose-built rental market” at $1,176 per 30 days. In the meantime, the typical two-bedroom within the condominium residence market is $1,724 and the emptiness charge in that sector is 1.4 per cent.
The CMHC report notes that flats are “scarce within the decrease hire ranges.” It additionally discovered that the typical hire improve for flats that turned over to new tenants was a lot increased, at 18.7 per cent, than for these the place the lease was renewed, at 4.7 per cent.
The excellent news, based on the report, is that Montreal has been constructing rental models at a sooner tempo than different Canadian cities, which has prevented the emptiness charge from getting worse.
Landlords in Quebec usually are not supposed to lift hire past really useful quantities between tenants, however the information suggests many do. Tenants in Quebec have the proper to refuse or negotiate on hire will increase with their landlords.
Sud-Ouest neighborhood members caught messages calling for a hire hike freeze to a poster. (Verity Stevenson/CBC)
It is why Fontaine’s group and its umbrella group, the Coalition of Housing Committees and Tenants Associations of Quebec’s (RCLALQ), has been calling for a compulsory rental registry.
“With a registry, there could be quite a bit fewer repossessions and renovictions. As a result of why are they doing these? It is to lift the hire,” Fontaine stated.
Eric Sansoucy, spokesperson for a Quebec landlords’ affiliation, stated the rise advised by the TAL will permit house owners to meet up with the price of inflation, which has decreased considerably in latest months.
“Landlords have seen their prices explode in recent times,” stated Sanscoucy, with the Company des Propriétaires Immobiliers du Québec.
Belynda Joseph, a member of POPIR, lives in a housing co-operative in Saint-Henri together with her daughter who has quadriplegia. (Verity Stevenson/CBC)
Energy imbalance
David Wachsmuth, the Canada analysis chair in city governance and an assistant professor at McGill College, says he understands why tenants’ teams consider the concept of a catch-up is unfair.
For many years, he stated, there was an influence imbalance beneficial to landlords in Montreal.
“They’ve a simple time discovering tenants. The emptiness charge is tremendous low, to allow them to ask for no matter they need, principally, and tenants don’t have any selection however to just accept it,” Wachsmuth stated.
Whereas Montreal rents stay decrease than a lot of the nation, that hole is shrinking.
“It is a actually, actually, actually worrying time as a result of what we must be saying, nationally, is what would it not take to make Toronto and Vancouver look extra like Montreal, not the opposite means round,” he stated.
Wachsmuth referred to as the TAL’s really useful hire improve “fairly putting.”
“It means successfully endorsing an unsustainably quick progress in the price of dwelling for Montreal renters and Quebec renters basically,” he stated.
Montreal distinguishes itself with low-rise residence buildings which have traditionally been reasonably priced, he defined. “In distinction to Toronto and Vancouver, which have all these single-family properties and all these towers, Montreal does not have a lot of both of these. It is a particular place,” Wachsmuth stated.
“The dearer housing turns into, the extra we’re sort of deteriorating a part of what makes Montreal such an amazing metropolis, frankly.”
