Surging price of residing drives many out of Concordia’s neighbourhood
As soon as thought-about to be probably the most inexpensive metropolis in Canada, Montreal’s lease prices proceed to rise at a price that lots of the metropolis’s residents, companies and neighborhood teams are struggling to fulfill. For a lot of, particularly these residing within the neighbourhood round Concordia’s Sir George Williams campus, it’s a development that’s placing their future within the space into query.
Representatives from over 11 neighborhood teams within the Peter-McGill district, which encompasses each Concordia’s Sir George Williams campus and McGills’ downtown campus, convened a neighbourhood meeting on the College Trades Catering And Tourism De Montréal to deal with the challenges posed by rising prices of residing all through the district.
“The main target of tonight’s assembly is to attract consideration to the difficulty of house within the downtown neighbourhood,” mentioned Margot Digard, communications officer for the Peter-McGill Group Council. “We’ve seen a whole lot of organisations go away the neighbourhood due to points round lease and never having the ability to afford companies.”
In line with knowledge collected by the Peter-McGill Group Council, the common price of a one-bedroom condominium within the neighbourhood got here in at round $1,400 a month, with the price of a two-bedroom going as excessive as $2,000 monthly in some cases. These charges are among the highest reported lease costs within the metropolis.
With demand far exceeding the present provide, inexpensive rental choices for neighborhood organisations based mostly in and across the Peter-McGill space continues to decrease and pre-existing centres are put in jeopardy as property prices proceed to rise. Christa Smith, coordinator of the youth group Innovation Jeunes, says her organisation was compelled out from their unique constructing after she alleged that the property proprietor instigated a lease improve in an try to get the organisation to forfeit their lease.
“We spent shut to 10 years on Pierce Road,” mentioned Smith. “Then in 2018, the proprietor wished to extend our lease by virtually 40 per cent, which we quickly realised [meant] that he mainly wished us out.”
Whereas Innovation Jeunes was in a position to relocate to a close-by Pentecostal church, this end result stays the exception to the norm. Maryse Chapdelaine, Mission Supervisor of the Peter-McGill neighborhood council, defined that many requests by neighborhood teams for extra help from established establishments just like the Montréal Common Hospital and Concordia College are met with indifference.
“Sure, we tried, however Concordia refuses to open any house to the neighborhood,” mentioned
Chapdelaine when requested if the Peter-McGill Group Council had thought-about leasing out house from the College. In a single occasion, Chapdelaine recalled how the College refused to open the Gray Nuns courtyard to the general public through the top of the COVID-19 pandemic.
“We requested them, ‘are you able to open them now that there are not any college students,’ and so they mentioned no. After which we requested the town, ‘might you ask Concordia to open the backyard’ and Concordia mentioned to the town of Montreal, no,” mentioned Chapdelaine.
Whereas Concordia does allow outdoors organisations to lease out house on College property, in keeping with Chapdelaine the hourly price that’s charged by the administration tends to fall far past the monetary technique of most neighborhood organisations.
Chapdelaine stresses that there is no such thing as a ‘magic bullet’ resolution for the continuing affordability disaster in Peter-McGill. Any long-lasting resolution should embody Concordia, if the College needs to protect the neighbourhood it calls residence.
