MONTREAL -- The Front d'action populaire en réaménagement urbain (FRAPRU) will undertake a long campaign across Quebec next month to obtain ambitious financial commitments from the Quebec government for social housing.
FRAPRU wants the Legault government to devote the funds necessary to build the thousands of social housing units announced for 10 years, but that the organization is still waiting for.
FRAPRU says that last year, barely 835 cooperative and non-profit housing units were built in Quebec.
In the organization's opinion, the $260 million added by the government to the AccèsLogis Québec program in its budget last March is insufficient. The program was designed to encourage the pooling of resources to create affordable, community housing for low- and moderate-income households and for people with special housing needs.
The campaign called 'Social housing now!' will be made up of caravans that will travel through Quebec to highlight the housing problems experienced by tenants and the social housing projects carried out in the regions.
Soon, activists grouped in caravans will leave from Gatineau, Rouyn-Noranda, Montreal, Chateauguay, Sherbrooke, Saguenay and Rimouski to go to ridings represented by members of the Coalition Avenir Quebec (CAQ). They will then converge on Quebec to hold a demonstration on Feb. 7 which will set off at the Parc de Amérique française to go to the National Assembly.
FRAPRU criticizes the Quebec government for abandoning households that are not benefiting from current economic development to market forces, even if it allocates the means to resolve the issues.
The organization notes that the acceleration of the value of residential buildings causes large increases in rents for the poorest. It also deplores the fact that more and more real estate developers are buying back leases, often targeting buildings where tenants live who pay lower rents. It is then common for these tenants to be chased to areas far from the services and support networks of their neighbourhood.
FRAPRU also noted that in tourist regions, eight-month leases are sometimes imposed in order to reserve accommodation for the summer vacation.
Municipalities must also have resources from Quebec, according to FRAPRU, in particular, to rehabilitate low-rent housing (HLM) and to establish health codes to discourage negligence.
The campaign that FRAPRU is about to launch should culminate in the spring of 2021 with the organization of a camp for the poorly housed in the Montreal region.
