Montreal says it’s making it easier for groups to build off-market housing

The City of Montreal wants to sell more land to community organizations, housing co-ops and other groups to build off-market housing.

On Tuesday, the city unveiled a new policy intended to make it easier for those organizations to purchase city-owned land and build housing units there.

“What we hope is to make life easier for our partners,” Mayor Valérie Plante said at a morning news conference.

The new policy comes as the city administration tries to accelerate the construction of social and affordable housing, which it says play a critical role in addressing the housing crisis.

The policy comes into effect on Jan. 1, 2025. It allows the city to sell its land — usually vacant lots or parking lots — at a break-even price if it is being used to build off-market housing.

The break-even price is the price the city paid for the land plus whatever it cost the city to maintain the land since it has owned it. It means the city won’t make a profit on the land and community organizations can buy it often for below the current market price.

As part of the city’s new policy, they have released an interactive map which shows the properties that are available to buy and build on. There are at least 77 sites available, or that could soon be available, for off-market housing.

Montreal has already sold 18 plots of land to various community groups and housing co-ops for the construction of off-market housing (social and affordable units), but Plante said the city wants to do more.

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Plante said private developers usually have an advantage over non-profit builders when it comes to financing new projects: they usually have their funding ready to go. She said the city’s new policy will help non-profit builders see what land is available to buy and what funding programs are available to help them develop on that land.

Benoit Dorais, the mayor of the Sud-Ouest borough and the vice president of the city’s executive committee, said the increased transparency from the interactive map should help non-profit builders speed up their search for land.

“It allows more information, more transparency, more visibility to accelerate off-market housing,” he said.

Carl Lafrenière, a community organizer with housing advocacy group FRAPRU, said the city’s policy doesn’t make clear how it will choose what projects to greenlight in cases where multiple groups want to build on the same land.

“Montrealers wish that social housing projects correspond to the needs of the community,” Lafrenière said. “The policy needs to be more clear about how they will choose one project over another.”

Julien Hénault-Ratelle, housing critic for the official opposition at Montreal City Hall, said the city’s policy comes too late.

“After eight years in office, citizens expect a lot more than a simple interactive map from their municipal administration to streamline and speed up the construction of new non-market housing projects,” she said.

“In short, while this measure isn’t inherently bad, this kind of predictability should have been provided to community partners long ago.”