Montreal aims to address housing crisis by easing rules for developers

Montreal Mayor Soraya Martinez Ferrada says she will loosen the rules for developers and offer up dozens of city-owned lots for projects in an attempt to ease the housing crisis. 

Martinez Ferrada announced at a news conference Friday she is doing away with her predecessor Valerie Plante’s policy that required developers to devote a portion of their project to affordable, social housing or family housing — or pay a financial penalty.

Under the new plan, to be presented at city council on Monday, the requirements are being rolled into a single "20 per cent off-market" obligation that doesn't include social housing.

The rules will only apply to massive projects larger than 18,000 square metres, effectively exempting small and mid-sized projects.

"The housing crisis has affected all Montrealers for too long," Martinez Ferrada said.

"To get there, we have to build faster, build better and, above all, build together."

Scrapping Plante's policy, known as the "20-20-20 plan," was among Martinez Ferrada's campaign promises last fall.

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The mayor also said she would establish a working group composed of representatives from the private and non-profit sectors. 

Her administration said it identified 80 municipally owned lots that are available for non-profit and mixed-use projects. The administration claims about 40 of these sites could see shovels in the ground within three years.

In 2024, the Plante administration also made a commitment to open up city land to non-profits.

Martinez Ferrada's aministration has already allocated $30 million to make land available at a reduced cost. Another $50 million has been earmarked to prepare city sites for development, she said Friday.

The complete map of city lots available for development is expected to be published online by March 1.

Isabelle Melançon, head of l'Institut de développement urbain, a lobby group representing the commercial real estate industry in Quebec, welcomed the end of Plante's 20-20-20 bylaw.

She said developers ended up building in outer suburbs such as Laval and Longueuil instead of the city because of the rules.

"It created a negative impact for the city," Melançon said.

Catherine Lussier, co-ordinator for tenants rights' group FRAPRU, acknowledged that there had been a lack of funding for social housing, but said the removal of the 20-20-20 bylaw was a blow to tenants.

"The matter is always for who we want to develop," she said. "For us, the bylaw was something that was putting these kinds of rules, of saying 'we want to develop, we want Montreal to stay affordable, we want neighbourhoods to be able to stay affordable.'"

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