City of Montreal to exercise right of first refusal to turn properties for sale into social housing

Mayor Valrie Plante says Montreal has identified 300 properties that it will attempt to buy and develop into social housing, using the city's right offirst refusal.

This means the city will have, before anybody else, the chance to buy land or buildings in areas where rental housing is particularly scarce, she told reporters on Monday.

She described the right of first refusal as another tool to respond to the city's rental housing shortage and "offer quality housing at affordable prices and to maintain the diversity in our neighbourhoods."

The mayor stressed that exercising the right of first refusal is not the same as expropriation, as it only applies to properties that are already on the market and have an interested buyer.

Once a buyer makes an offer, the city has 60 days to step in on thesale and match whatever offer is on the table, Coun.Roger Beaudry explained.

"It's going to make no difference," said Beaudry, who is the executive committee member in charge of housing. "It's going to be the city or the private owner that is going to own the land for the exact same price."

The city acquired the pre-emptive right to acquire property in 2016, in a landmark piece of legislation dubbedRflexe Montral, which was aimed at giving the city more powers over its own economic and social development and urban planning.

Since then,city has only exercised this powerto buy land for parks and other public infrastructurewhile the rental housing vacancy rate has continued to erode, finally hitting a 15-year low of 1.5 per cent citywide this year.

Plante said the city has zeroed in on neighbourhoodswhere rental units are particularly scarce, though most of the properties the city is hoping to buyare not yet on the market.

The city will send out letters to the owners of 300 properties which it would like to turn into social housing, informing those owners that it has the right of first refusal should they put their property up for sale.

The properties are in the boroughs ofCte-des-NeigesNotre-Dame-de-Grce, Mercier-Hochelaga-Maisonneuve, PlateauMont-Royal, Sud-Ouest, Verdun andVille-Marie.

The mayor said there is aparticular focus on the traditionally low-rent neighbourhoods ofVilleraySaint-MichelParc-Extension where rents have been driven up by the new Universit de Montral campus in the nearby borough ofOutrement.

Housing advocates applaud initiative

Amy Darwish, a tenants' advocate with theComit d'action de Parc-Extension, said she was pleased to learn that Montreal has targeted herarea for social housing development as there are many residents living in dire situations.

The neighbourhood, she said, has a vacancy rate of about one per cent, and apartments large enough to accommodate an entire family are nearly impossible to find.

In some cases,multiple families are cramming into two-bedroom apartments, or people are staying in terrible housing conditions because they feel have no other choice, she said.

Darwish said others are moving to the fringes of the city away from theirservices, schools and social networks. And in a neighbourhood as diverse as Parc-Extension, residents there often face discrimination when apartment-hunting, she said.

Montreal has also identified properties in Cte-des-Neigesfor potential development, which is welcome news to Sheetal Pathak, a community organizer with the tenants' advocacy group Project Genesis.

"It feels like the city is taking the housing crisis seriously," she said. "Butwe still feel the provincial and federal government still need to step up because those units are not going to be built without significant support from the higher levels of government."

This call for provincial and federal support is something Plante has reiterated several times in recent weeks.

"I am calling on the other levels of governments to help us reach our goals," she said during Monday's announcement. "We are ready to build. We have the team. We have the structure to make it happen."