Community groups call for social housing on Blue Bonnets site
23 Oct 2019
Community groups in Côte-des-Neiges called on the city Tuesday evening to build 2,500 social housing units on the former Blue Bonnets racetrack.
“As we are facing a housing crisis in Montreal, it is more and more difficult for people to find a home that they can afford,” Priscilla George, a member of the board of Project Genesis, said during the citizens’ question period.
“Blue Bonnets could be a solution to these issues,” she added.
Under the city’s proposed bylaw aimed at maintaining inclusive neighbourhoods, 20 per cent of the units in the future project would be reserved as social housing (subsidized units for low-income residents).
But George argued that given quickly rising rents and a dearth of affordable housing, that share should be increased.
“Blue Bonnets is public land. It is the city’s responsibility to ensure that enough social housing is going to be built on it,” she said.
Project Genesis maintains that all of the housing developments to date in the area, like the Triangle in the Jean-Talon St.-Décarie Blvd area, are aimed at higher-income condo buyers.
Only 209 social units were built in the Triangle, compared to 2,200 pricey condos, the community organization notes.
Yet 30 per cent of Côte-des-Neiges residents live under the poverty line and 7,445 out of 34,820 households there spend more than half their income on rent, it says.
The residential component in the future Royalmount project at Highways 40 and 15 will also target people with greater means than the thousands of Côte-des-Neiges residents struggling to get by, it notes.
Craig Sauvé, an associate councillor responsible for housing on the executive committee, responded by saying that the long-promised project is still in the “very early phases.”
“Indeed, there will be a significant amount of social housing,” he assured George.
Sauvé promised that public consultations would be held on the project and invited members of Project Genesis and other community organizations to take part.
“It’s an amazing opportunity to create the social housing, to create ‘mixité’ (diversity). And we’re going to be very ambitious as well in terms of ecology,” he said.
