2023-09-03 08:00:00
The president of the housing shock committee, Daniel Champagne, sees this as the “unequivocal” result of the new ways of doing things put in place in Gatineau in the past year. “Gatineau is becoming a benchmark in its way of dealing with the housing crisis,” he says.
Since the arrival of France Bélisle at the town hall, 162 social housing units have been delivered on the territory of Gatineau and 235 are currently under construction, specifies the mayor’s team. Just over 600 more are in the planning stages and should be delivered no later than December 2025.
“When the shock committee was created, we said that we didn’t want it to become a social club, that we wanted it to be a committee that ensures very close monitoring of very specific projects and obviously, it works, says Mr. Champagne. […] The only way to deal with the current crisis is to put in place incentives for the development of social and community housing, and that is what we have been doing for a year. […] We have always favored the carrot instead of the stick and we can see it, our partners are showing up. When we take concrete action and support the promoters as we do, it quickly becomes known in the community.
Brilliance
A few stunts made by the municipal council seem to have sent strong messages to the Government of Quebec and to the City’s partners in housing, notes Mr. Champagne. The first is undoubtedly the granting of $800,000 in February to allow unplanned decontamination work to be carried out at the Saint-Étienne des Oeuvres Isidore-Ostiguy project, at the corner of Kent and Dollard streets. -des-Ormeaux, in the city center.
It was then a completely extraordinary expense for the City. Decontamination work does not fall under its jurisdiction. Without this aid, the 15 social housing project for families might have been abandoned altogether, due to a lack of funding to carry out the environmental work.
Two months later, the council agreed to an emergency grant of $10 million to save the Coulombe project, a social housing complex comprising 93 units. “It was another clear message from the council,” insists Mr. Champagne. It was further proof that this council is not afraid to do things differently. We hoped that the amount would be refunded to us later, but we had no guarantee of that at the time of the vote. The city was able to get its money back thanks to the federal government’s Rapid Housing Initiative (RCLI), which offered a grant of the same amount to the developers of the project.
The subject was the subject of numerous debates between Mayor Bélisle, her entourage and Action Gatineau, but the municipal council also ended up agreeing, just before the summer holidays, on an affordable housing strategy to which graft a new housing subsidy program in the downtown area. The latter will seek to promote the construction of affordable and family housing in the city centre. The controversy surrounding the sale of municipal land for the Îlot de la Caserne project has led to the addition of municipal requirements for similar transactions in the future. Thus, when the time comes for the sale of the municipal lands of the Foundry, the buyer must commit to providing 15% affordable housing and 15% social housing in his residential projects.
Light at the end of the tunnel
Two reasons make Daniel Champagne say today that we are beginning to see light at the end of the tunnel of the housing crisis in Gatineau. “First, we have concrete results, we are currently doing between three and four times more social housing on our territory than in past years, he mentions. There is also the federal government, which says it wants to make housing a top priority. Our council is also unanimous in the strategy to adopt so that we have more social housing. […] The crisis will not be over at the end of the mandate, but I think that with what we will have put in place, Gatineau will have done better than all the large municipalities in Quebec.
The economic situation might, however, represent a shadow on the board and thwart the positive forecasts of the chairman of the shock committee. “We have twice as many permits as housing starts,” notes Mr. Champagne. It’s not trivial. It is very worrying. This means that the economic situation is starting to delay the realization of certain projects. Since the City has no control over the global economy, all it can do, adds Mr. Champagne, is to continue to put in place the tools to help developers build social housing.
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