'Sell us your residential buildings,' Montreal tells property owners

The City of Montreal and the Socit d'habitation et de dveloppement de Montral (SHDM) have been acquiringrental properties and rooming houses in order to keep rents affordable for dozens of tenants, but those are small gains compared to what's needed to ease the city's housing crisis.

Canadian Apartment REIT (CAPREIT), Canada's largest listed rental housing provider, wants to sell hundreds of units in Montreal, particularly in the Cte-des-NeigesNotre-Dame-de-Grce(CDNNDG) borough, Radio-Canada has learned.

"We're open for business, come talk to us," CAPREIT President and CEO Mark Kenny said.

The Toronto-based company owns more than 60,000 residential apartments, townhouses and community-based prefabricated homes.

It says ithopes to sell more than $500 million worth of existing properties and reinvest in brand new properties, particularly in Quebec, and it understandsgovernment interest in housing.

Montreal has notified CAPREITin recent months that it intends to exercise its right of first refusal in order to buy the properties if the companyis preparing to sell them.

Right of first refusal

CAPREIT is not the only owner with buildings that the city is interested in buying.

According to a data compiled by Radio-Canada, since last year, nearly 350 owners received an official notice fromMontreal informingthemthat their building or land was subject to the city'sright of first refusal.

This right gives the city the option of buying the property before anyone else can offer to purchase it.

Benoit Dorais, the vice-chairof the executive committee and the councillor responsible for housing, says property owners should reach out to the city if they want to sell property.

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"If you want to sell things that maybe less attractive to you because you can't make as muchprofit as you want, well,our goal is not to make profit, it's to meet needs," he said.

"If we manage to agree on a reasonable price, we can make a transaction."

Among theproperties the city is interested in purchasing isa hostel in downtown Montreal.

Saving rooming houses

About half the residential properties subject to the city's right of first refusal are in theVille-Marie, CDNNDG and Sud-Ouest boroughs. About 100 of those buildings are rooming houses where a tenant rents a single room and has shared use of the kitchen and bathroom.

The number of rooming houses has been in decline over the past 15 years, and Dorais says the city is keen to preserve them.

"The rooming houses, we have to keep them. They are really the last bastion against homelessness," said Dorais.

"They allowsomeone who lived in a room to be able to keep their home safe from speculation, safe from renoviction, safe from the fluctuation of economic cycles."

Montreal has budgeted $600 million to buy land and buildings over 10 years.

The city does not intend to hold onto thisreal estate, said Dorais. Its goal istotake rooming houses out of the regular speculative market and transfer them to non-profit organizations thathave a mission to house people.

In the greaterMontreal area, the percentage of social and community housing has stalled at 6 per cent for 20 years, according to data from the Greater Montreal Observatory.

But at least 20 per cent of the region'shousing stock shouldbe social or affordable housing, said Sbastien Parent-Durand, executive director of the Alliance of Affordable Housing Corporations in Greater Montreal (ACHAT).

"With the the housing crisis, people are really under a lot of financial pressure, and the rents are getting higher and higher," said Parent-Durand.

"We think with 20 per centof the offer on the market, we would be able to answer the real needs of population."