Faced with the crisis that is shaking the real estate sector, the City of Montreal is setting up an advisory committee, which will aim to facilitate the development of affordable housing in the city.

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"It's a shock team, which is responsible for leading the most important affordable housing file of the 21st century, here in Montreal," said the mayor of Montreal, Valérie Plante.

She said she wanted to create “innovative models” for the metropolis, believing that this common front was necessary to allow the creation of affordable housing in the metropolis.

Composed of 11 members, the committee set up will be responsible for improving the City's real estate strategy, reviewing the financing of projects, and reviewing the regulatory framework at the municipal level.

The committee will also examine the role and mandates of the Société d’habitation et de développement de Montréal.

The first meetings of the experts are scheduled for the end of June. A progress report of committee activities will be released in early 2023.

The City hopes that these fields of reflection will enable it to achieve its objectives of building 60,000 affordable housing units within the next 10 years.

“What is affordable housing? This question is difficult to answer. What we are doing, we had to do it 10 years ago, ”explained Ms. Plante.

Last summer, our Bureau of Investigation revealed that hundreds of affordable housing units resulting from the City of Montreal's Inclusion Strategy ended up in the hands of wealthy investors, who sold them or rented them at high prices.

In a project in the Rosemont district, the only affordable units were sold to relatives of the developers and to a construction contractor linked to the project. Two of the condos were sold a few months later, with profits of over 50%.

-With the collaboration of Dominique Cambron-Goulet.