If you work in homelessness, you have to keep a close eye on affordable housing markets. We all want more housing and less homelessness. The opposite is happening. What’s to be done?

According to Canadian housing expert Steve Pomeroy, Canada lost more than 320,000 units of affordable housing between 2011 and 2016. Montreal lost 80,000 units over this time period.

This amounts to about 16,000 units per year and tens of thousands more since. Real estate investment trusts and investors have gobbled up the lion’s share of this stock, renovating them and raising rents.

The average annual rent increases of these formerly affordable apartments have been 20 per cent, according to Pomeroy. Governments have funded the addition of new affordable units over the last decade but only at a rate of about one unit for every 10.

Housing is the new gold and investors are having a field day at the expense of vulnerable renters.

Old Brewery Mission has seen up close the efforts of several large commercial landlords to scare many formerly homeless people out of their apartments with bogus claims of lease violations, intimidation, and illegal rent increases.

So it’s not a coincidence that homelessness is rising. In 2018, there were a minimum of 3,149 homeless people on any given night in Montreal.

The next official homelessness street count will be carried out in October but experts suggest the population has risen again to approximately 4,000 people on any given day.

Politicians are putting an emphasis on “supply side” answers to the crisis. To this end, the federal Liberals have announced funding for the creation of 160,000 new units of affordable housing over the next 10 years across the country through its National Housing Strategy.

However, it won’t be enough.

“Considering the rate at which units are disappearing, we’re running backwards on the treadmill”, Pomeroy said in a recent interview.

We absolutely need new supply like those projects funded through the federal Rapid Housing Initiative (RHI). The Old Brewery is one of many non-profit organizations in Montreal developing affordable housing adapted for individuals with complex needs leaving homelessness through the RHI.

We welcome targeted funding opportunities such as these, but alone they will not make a big enough dent to truly reverse the upward trend in homelessness. Additional housing supply needs to be complemented by dramatic regulatory interventions to “definancialize” housing markets.

There are four ways this can be done.

In order to cool the acquisition of more affordable housing stock by investors which inexorably leads to higher rents, the provincial government should cap increases on rents of newly acquired affordable stock, whether renovations are carried out or not. This measure should help reduce the number of “renovictions” we are currently witnessing across the city.

A related measure is to better equip tenants to contest evictions before the rental board. New York City evictions fell by 40 per cent after tenants were assigned a lawyer at no cost to better defend their interests before the tribunal.

Montreal has already put some controls in place on the conversion of apartment units to Airbnb-type models. It’s now time for the provincial government to put a full freeze on any such conversions.

Finally, Montreal should move quickly to allow for the conversion of select vacant commercial towers into affordable rentals.

We have no precedent for a housing crisis of this kind. The new committee established by Mayor Plante to look at innovative methods to address it is welcome but the provincial government has to get into the fight as well.

Innovative measures need to be put into place quickly at both the municipal and provincial levels, not only to help create corridors out of the homeless shelters and into affordable housing but also to prevent further cases of homelessness from occurring.

The time to act is now.

James Hughes is the president and CEO of the Old Brewery Mission.