CORPIQ reacts to the budget

In a context of soaring construction costs and delays, CORPIQ believes the Quebec government has made the right choice by extending direct financial assistance to an additional 600 households to help them secure housing, while also accelerating the delivery of already announced social housing projects.

More specifically, CORPIQ welcomes the approximately $18 million in additional direct assistance for tenants with urgent and specific housing needs. This support will allow them to secure housing in the private market without spending more than 25% of their income on rent.

CORPIQ also considers the allocation of $250 million to accelerate the delivery of 5,000 already announced subsidized housing units to be justified, given that the longer these projects are delayed, the higher the average cost per unit becomes. However, the additional 500 AccèsLogis units included in the budget ($37 million) could have the effect of drawing tenants away from private rental housing.

“More housing units are available today than a year ago, particularly in Montreal, and tenants across Quebec are facing urgent and often temporary situations. They need financial assistance that is fast and flexible, not necessarily increasingly expensive construction projects that will only be completed several years from now,” said Hans Brouillette, CORPIQ’s Director of Public Affairs.

CORPIQ also notes that funding for the Rénovation Québec program will increase from $16 million to $36 million. Before celebrating the increase, however, the organization wants to see how municipalities will distribute these funds, what portion will be allocated to private rental housing, and under what criteria.

Quebec government is making renovation challenges worse

In his Budget Speech, the Minister of Finance announced $4.5 billion in infrastructure investments. Given the current labour shortages and rapidly rising costs for both construction workers and building materials, CORPIQ believes this will further aggravate conditions for the thousands of rental properties requiring renovation work to ensure that housing remains safe, functional, and available.

“We recently received a refusal from Labour Minister Jean Boulet to modernize the outdated R-20 legislation governing construction labour, but the discussion cannot end there. The government must exempt existing rental housing buildings from this restrictive legislation. Workers covered by the Act are simply not interested in the types of renovation projects property owners need to undertake, and even if they were, the cost of that labour would be too high to keep rents affordable. Large-scale public infrastructure projects, combined with the housing construction boom, are absorbing available workers and making it increasingly difficult to maintain the rental housing stock where tenants live,” said Mr. Brouillette.