Tuesday, April 15, 2025
Housing Is a Right!
Protest for Social Housing During "Leaders' Debate" in Montreal
• Protest for Social Housing During "Leaders' Debate" in Montreal
• Quebec's Crisis of Housing, Homelessness and Lack
of People's
Empowerment
• Montreal Action in Defence of the Right to Housing
• Food Insecurity in Ottawa — An Election Issue
Housing Is a Right!
Protest for Social Housing During
"Leaders' Debate" in Montreal
The right to housing organization Popular Action Front for Urban Renewal (FRAPRU) has called on everyone to join in a demonstration at the Radio-Canada Tower in Montreal on April 16 where the French-language "leaders' debate" will take place.
"To counter the housing crisis affecting Quebec and all Canadian provinces, the Canadian government must use all means at its disposal to build 500,000 social housing units in 10 years," writes FRAPRU in its call to action.
"While the outgoing Liberal government has provided some funding, it is far from enough to meet the crying need for social housing. Worse: some parties want to cut this funding! The federal government's money is supposed to fund social housing, not private housing," it writes.
FRAPRU wants whoever forms the next government to commit to social housing and has called on everyone to "come and make noise" during the debate at the Radio-Canada tower at 6:00 pm at 1000 Papineau Avenue in Montreal.
Quebec's Crisis of Housing, Homelessness and Lack
of People's
Empowerment
On the evening of the French language "leaders' debate" in Montreal,
one of the organizations active in fighting for the right to affordable
housing, the social organization Popular Action Front for Urban Renewal
(FRAPRU), has called a demonstration to underscore their demands. This
is one of
the topics the leaders seem to have reached a consensus to overlook or
speak nonsense about or mix up with immigration so as to invite
anti-immigrant hostility.
But it is a serious problem affecting more and more Canadians and Quebeckers across the country. The attitude of governments at all levels reveals more than anything else the contempt they have for the people who the system renders disposable. They cry crocodile tears from time to time and, in the end, more and more money is given to land speculators and real estate developers whose sole goal is to make as much money as possible.
A survey of shelters for homeless people conducted in Quebec on the night of April 23, 2024, the last time such a survey was taken, is typical in this regard. An inventory of service points offering shelter to people experiencing homelessness, as well as warming shelters open during the winter and those open on the night of the survey, provided data which showed that an estimated number of homeless people sheltered that night was 9,307.
While an average increase of eight per cent per year was observed between the 2018 and 2022 censuses, the increase between the 2022 and 2024 censuses was 15 per cent. The next homelessness census across Quebec takes place on April 15, 2025, the day before the French language "leaders' debate" where the closest theme which could possibly deal with this problem facing Canadians across the country is "cost of living."
As if costs just rise by themselves and leaders can shamelessly stand there and tell us they will bring them under control.
"All we can expect is a deterioration of the situation," says Annie Savage, director of the Montreal Network for Assistance to Single and Homeless People (RAPSIM).
The Island of Montreal is the area with the highest number of homeless people in Quebec. According to 2022 data, 47 per cent of the 10,000 people counted as being homeless are located there. And today, homelessness is no longer a phenomenon strictly linked to downtown Montreal. It extends to several Montreal neighbourhoods, as well as to Laval and the South Shore.
The results of the most recent count of people experiencing visible homelessness in Quebec reveal a marked increase in the number of people experiencing homelessness. Between 2018 and 2022, among the administrative regions of Greater Montreal, the number of people experiencing visible homelessness increased the most in the Laurentians (+109 per cent), followed closely by Montérégie (+98 per cent).
In the Greater Montreal area, there was a 33 per cent increase in visible homelessness. The number of "visible" homeless people on the streets of Quebec almost doubled between 2018 and 2022, according to new data on homelessness obtained by Radio-Canada. A total of 10,000 homeless people were recorded, compared to 5,789 four years earlier. In the Outaouais, the number of homeless people has increased fivefold since 2018. In Montérégie, there are three times as many, and in the Capitale-Nationale region, their number has doubled.
Furthermore, homelessness increasingly affects women, Indigenous people, young people, and the elderly.
Across Quebec, the primary reason cited by respondents to the 2022 census for losing their last home was eviction (23 per cent). Of these, 53 per cent reported being evicted due to unpaid rent. Statistically, those over 50 were more likely to cite eviction as the reason for losing their home.
Homelessness is also reflected in the growing number of homeless encampments across Canada. Since 2021, 12,879 encampments have been dismantled by law enforcement and municipal employees in the country's five most populous cities. Many times police brutally smash them. This phenomenon has grown in several major cities, including Montreal, but the increase has been most pronounced in Edmonton, Alberta's second-largest city.
Edmonton has dismantled 4,605 encampments since 2021, under the guise that they were deemed "high risk." This is almost as many as in Toronto, which has a population 2.5 times larger.
According to publicly available, federal data (2023 National Shelter Study Update), the number of homeless people in emergency shelters was estimated at 118,329 in 2023, compared to 105,655 in 2022.
When homelessness is spoken about, a link is inferred of people living in shelters, or those who are completely homeless, sleeping in camps or on the streets. This type of homelessness, called "absolute homelessness," is experienced by 2.2 per cent of households at least once in their lives. However, a much higher proportion of Canadians (10.5 per cent) have experienced "hidden homelessness," such as temporarily staying with an acquaintance when they had nowhere else to go.
On Wednesday, April 16, during the leaders' debate on Radio-Canada, the social organization FRAPRU will be holding a rally outside the Radio-Canada offices. The intense concern people have about housing and homelessness, which is severely affecting the Laurier-Sainte-Marie neighborhood where Radio-Canada has its offices and the debate is taking place. The topic is not on the debate agenda. Governments and cartel parties are not interested in homeless people because they are not the voters they rely on to get elected.
Those
fighting on the front lines for the rights of the homeless and for the
right to affordable housing to be provided with a constitutional
guarantee express contempt for cartel party leaders and governments at
all levels who are oblivious to the needs of the homeless.
The system that empowers the rich to decide everything and keeps the people powerless is responsible for perpetuating homelessness. The cartel party system deprives the people of any power to decide the direction of the economy so that it serves the people. The government's refusal to assume social responsibility to all members of society so that they can live in dignity and that no one is left to fend for themselves causes homelessness. Homelessness is exacerbated by government policies of paying the rich for development. It is also compounded by the policy of perpetuating a system which makes human beings disposable, such as the refusing to provide affordable housing for all without exception with a guarantee and instead favour large real estate companies.
The living and working conditions of Canadians and Quebeckers, what they expect from the economy, how resources should be used, and who should control them, are matters which concern every member of the polity. These are not merely social issues but serious political issues because human beings at present do not control the decisions which affect their lives.
Montreal Action in Defence of the Right to Housing
The
Front d'action populaire en réaménagement urbain
(FRAPRU), a Quebec based organization in defence of the rights of
tenants, held a demonstration on Saturday, April 7, in cooperation with
tenants' committees from various Montreal neighborhoods, in front of
the Olympic Stadium where the 2nd
Summit of Eastern Montreal was being held. According to the Trade Board
of Eastern Montreal(CCEM), one of the major organizations involved in
the summit, the objective is "the revitalization and development of the
eastern part of the Island of Montreal" in order to "encourage
continued efforts by
promoting dialogue and collaboration between the various stakeholders
and government bodies." The people most concerned, the residents of
eastern Montreal and their advocacy organizations, were excluded.
Nearly
a hundred tenants, many of whom were demonstrating for the first time,
came to denounce the abusive rent increases as well as Bill 89, An Act to Give Greater Consideration to the Needs of the Population in the Event of a Strike or a Lock-out.
Those who spoke explained how an
attack on the rights of workers to be able to withdraw their labour
power in the event of a strike or the imposition of a lock-out by
employers was also an attack on the right to affordable housing.
After the presentations and summary of the situation, the organizers of the action held a "people's tribunal" where speakers acting as lawyers and witnesses presented the various ways in which the CAQ's housing policies attack the rights of tenants, especially the most vulnerable. Participants learned that the housing adaptation program, which subsidizes the installation of equipment such as access ramps, has been de facto suspended: despite the announcement of additional funds, these are only used to complete projects already in progress and new requests for funding are refused. The temporary rental of such equipment, people were told, costs more than 800 dollars per month!
In
addition to the essential protection of tenants against abusive rent
increases, FRAPRU and the tenants' committees are calling for an end to
evictions and discrimination, and for the construction of public social
housing in sufficient numbers to meet the needs of the people.
The action ended with a call for everyone to come and demonstrate at 6:00 pm on Wednesday, April 16, in front of the CBC building, where the "leaders' debate" will be held. The topics for the debate decided by the state broadcaster correspond to the agenda that the cartel parties want to impose. These topics will not address the issues that are at the heart of the concerns of the polity who want solutions that defend human rights, be it the right to housing, health and education, to name but a few.
Housing Crisis in Ottawa
In the nation's capital a Point-in-Time survey conducted by the City of Ottawa found that there were 2,952 people who were without homes in October 2024, a significant increase from similar counts done in 2021 and 2018. Since the City of Ottawa declared a homelessness emergency in 2020, the situation has worsened. Social service agencies that operate emergency shelters including the Ottawa Mission, report that the shelters face chronic overcapacity with the result that in January this year when temperatures dipped to at low as -20 degrees Celsius there were approximately 200 people known to be regularly sleeping outside. The Ottawa Mission reported that all shelters in the city have been operating at over 100 per cent capacity for several years.
There are 22,500 social housing units in Ottawa and there are 12,000 households on the waiting list for those units at any given time resulting in people waiting up to five years or more. To house those who currently need affordable housing in Ottawa would require 40,000 new units. A 2019 report by the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives found Ottawa's average rental rate was the fifth highest in the country, behind Vancouver, Toronto, Victoria and Calgary.
CBC reported in February on the survey conducted by the City of Ottawa in October 2024 which was completed by almost 2,600 people. Of the people surveyed, 43 per cent said that they were staying in emergency shelters, a decrease from 55 per cent in 2021 and 67 per cent in 2018 although the overall number of people staying in shelters rose by more than 300 over 2021.
A new feature, particularly in Canada's major cities, is the growing number of asylum seekers who are homeless. It show the callous approach of governments to securing the well-being of asylum seekerswho are quickly left to fend for themselves.
Ottawa Mission CEO said that at its peak, 67 per cent of its clients were newcomers. More than 600 respondents said they had been in Canada for less than a year and the City reports that 42 per cent of the respondents said that they had come to Canada as an immigrant, refugee or refugee claimant, up from 20 per cent of respondents in 2021.
The data showed that 30 per cent of the people surveyed said that they had lost housing because they were not earning enough to meet rising rents and cost of living expenses. Of the homeless youth who had been in foster care or group homes, 29 per cent reported becoming homeless less than a year after leaving foster care and 46 per cent of homeless youth with experience in foster care were Indigenous.
Governments
do not recognize housing as a right or take responsibility to ensure
safe and adequate housing for all citizens and residents of Canada.
They claim that the solution to the housing crisis is to provide public
funds to developers, whose sole motive is profit, in exchange for
promises
to build "affordable housing."
Such pay-the-rich schemes enrich developers and have only decreased the supply of rental housing and increased the cost to renters. Tenants face rising rents along with increases in the cost of all necessities. As well, renovictions – where landlords evict tenants under the guise of 'major renovations' in order to raise rents, are a common tactic of landlords.
Housing rights organization ACORN reports that from June 2024 to March 2025 it was aware of the eviction of over 350 tenants in Ottawa. The hardest hit are those on fixed incomes including seniors, and people dependent on different forms of social assistance including from the Ontario Disability Support Program.
In March activists organized a picket at the ODSP office in Ottawa to present demands including that the government at lease double ODSP rates and increase the housing allowance to match market rent in the city.
To protect tenants housing, activists are demanding rent controls, direct investment in social housing by governments at all levels, not handouts to developers, and other measures to ensure that the right of everyone to housing, to live with dignity and security, is guaranteed.
Food Insecurity in Ottawa — An Election Issue
The Ottawa Food Bank issued an appeal to federal election candidates to visit the food bank to "witness the resilience of our community, better understand the challenges we face, and see the policy gaps that urgently need attention."
The
Ottawa Food Bank has 98 food programs in its network and had over half
a million visits from people in need in 2024. In January of this year
the Food Bank announced that due to all-time high visits and rising
food costs these programs would receive 20 to 50 per cent less food
this year.
In 2019 their food budget was $1.7 million and in 2023 they spent nearly $9.8 million. CEO Rachel Wilson, when announcing the reduction, said "This is a historic time for food banks, and not in a great way."
In a report issued on its 40th anniversary in November 2024 entitled The Ottawa Hunger Crisis, the Food Bank informed that one in four households in Ottawa are grappling with hunger and that "severe food insecurity has nearly doubled since 2019, leaving many to skip meals entirely just to pay for rent or utilities.
With a record-breaking 556,000 visits to food programs in 2023, "this isn't just a wake-up call – it's a declaration of emergency," the report highlighted.
The Food Bank receives 98 per cent of its funding from the community with only the remaining two per cent from government support. "This imbalance reveals a precarious system strained to the breaking point. Food is a human right, yet our city operates on a charity model that is unsustainable in the face of rising demand," the report pointed out. It highlighted the increased vulnerability of newcomers, single parent families and workers who cannot make ends meet, and that 37 per cent of visitors were children.
In the introduction to its report the Ottawa Food Bank "calls on all levels of government to address the root causes of hunger: poverty, inadequate social supports, and the rising cost of living. ... Advocacy must expand to ensure affordable housing, fair wages, and stronger income security measures for all Ottawa residents."
Food security is a right which governments have a duty to uphold. In a modern society like Canada it is unconscionable that governments have abandoned their social responsibility, forcing people to fend for themselves and depend on contributions from the public to support Food Banks.
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Website: www.cpcml.ca • Email: editor@cpcml.ca