The Coalition Avenir Québec government is going to kill the province’s non-profit co-operative housing model with proposed legislation that would give the government control over the selection of co-op tenants and penalize or evict existing co-op tenants who earn better than a low income, and all because the government hasn’t invested in building social housing to alleviate the affordable housing crisis, a federation of co-operatives says.
“It threatens the long-term survival of the model of co-operative housing in Quebec,” Patrick Préville, executive director of the Fédération de l’habitation coopérative du Québec (FHCQ), said of Bill 20, which the CAQ government introduced in February. His federation, which represents 480 of the 1,300 housing co-operatives in the province, including those in Montreal, is calling on the government to withdraw the proposed legislation.
“It would weaken the co-operative housing model because it would push out people who have experience, skills and knowledge in managing co-ops and who share the values of co-operative living,” he said.
What’s more, new tenants would be selected by the government on the basis of income, Préville said. “Will the people chosen by the government want to live in a co-operative? Or are they only looking for an inexpensive apartment?”
Unlike
standard apartment buildings, people who live in
the units of a co-op are the building’s
co-owners and must participate in the building’s
management, attend meetings and work on
committees.
Housing co-operatives in Quebec cater to low-to-moderate income households, but their objectives include diversity and avoiding creating ghettos. At present, the board of each co-operative selects prospective members based on various criteria, including professional skills that they can contribute to managing and maintaining the co-op, and on their willingness to participate in a community-oriented and democratic milieu.
Unlike public low-income housing, housing co-operatives are private, non-profit businesses, Préville said. He noted many co-op boards apply a policy of selecting the lower-income earner if two applicants have equal skills and experience in, say, accounting or administration.
“The government is mixing up public social housing and co-operative housing, which is private,” he said of Bill 20.
“This is government interference in the activities of private, non-profit enterprises.”
The housing rights group Front d’action populaire en réaménagement urbain (FRAPRU) is also calling on the CAQ to withdraw Bill 20, saying it doesn’t address the lack of affordable housing in the province.
“They’re attacking the wrong problem,” FRAPRU co-ordinator Catherine Lussier said. “They’re going to control those who have access to affordable housing. It’s peculiar for this government to try to control access when the principal problem is the lack of housing.”
The CAQ hasn’t invested in new social housing, she added. What’s being delivered now is a backlog of units that have been in the works for years, Lussier said.
In fact, the province is simultaneously encouraging the construction of apartments charging above-market rent, she said. The rules to obtain low-interest provincial loans to finance housing development allow projects to include units that are up to 150 per cent of the rent caps in place to obtain social housing subsidies, Lussier said. Quebec has created a category it calls “intermediary affordability,” she said.
“So there’s a certain
incoherence for the government to say we’re
going to control what we have, but what we’re
financing and developing will be much more
expensive than the market,” Lussier said.
Moreover, Bill 20 would destroy the diversity
in housing co-operatives, she said. “Diversity
was the objective (under older provincial
housing subsidy programs) to begin with,”
Lussier said.
The history of co-operatives in Quebec began more than 150 years ago with mutual insurance and then the advent of agricultural co-operatives and financial co-operatives. The latter, known as “caisses populaires,” grew into the Desjardins Group, the largest federation of credit unions in North America
The co-op sector also counts funeral homes and worker co-ops. Housing co-operatives developed in Quebec largely in the 1990s.
With Bill 20, the CAQ government is also interfering in private leases, Préville said, because the legislation would empower the Société d’habitation du Québec (SHQ), a provincial agency, to cancel leases between co-operatives and their members, he said.
Bill 20 would also introduce a penalty on households in co-ops that have revenue that exceeds the SHQ’s income threshold for entering government-subsidized housing. The penalty, called “compensation” in Bill 20, would be collected by the government. While housing groups oppose the measure, they also question why the money should go into government coffers instead of the co-op and whether the government plans to invest the money it collects in social housing.
The CAQ seems to justify the government taking control of housing co-operatives because many were built with the help of provincial financing programs, Préville said.
But of the 1,300 housing co-ops in Quebec, half of them received construction subsidies from the federal government and no money from the province, he said. For the other half, there are many that were built in the 1990s that have paid off low-interest construction loans from the province and no longer have contractual obligations to it, he said.
“Name me one company in Quebec that hasn’t received a tax credit, different tax advantages and even provincial subsidies and investments,” Préville said.
“There are many that received hundreds of millions of dollars. Yet no government, and certainly not the CAQ, would conceive of introducing legislation that would give the government control over employee recruitment in private, for-profit businesses. … But they’re doing that for housing co-operatives, which are private, non-profit businesses.”
Bill 20 coincides with a report by Quebec’s auditor general last year that found gaps in the oversight of housing programs, including for housing co-operatives. The auditor general faulted the SHQ for not tracking annually the percentage of household income that co-op residents spend on rent. The report concluded at least 2,722 households benefitting from affordable housing across the province have incomes that exceed the SHQ’s income eligibility thresholds.
However, Préville and FRAPRU’s Lussier contend the auditor general and the CAQ government seem to misunderstand the nature of housing co-ops.
Housing cooperatives have a “rule of modesty,” so they are not luxury units, Lussier said, adding people with high incomes aren’t generally drawn to co-ops.
“There are income thresholds to enter the co-operative,” Préville said, adding they’re enforced. But people live in a co-op for the long haul and their financial situation changes as they get work promotions, go back to school or retire, he said. Now, the government seems to be faulting people who improved their conditions by living in a co-op with market or just-below market rent while working for the co-operative, Préville said. Some people who make enough money will leave a co-op to buy their own home, he said. Others remain because they embrace the philosophy of community living, he said.
Préville noted 60 per cent of housing co-op members are women.
Préville’s federation has launched a petition against Bill 20 and held an information session on Bill 20 for its members on Wednesday. About 800 people participated by video conference, he said.
The turnout, Préville said, “is a good demonstration of the underlying concern of our members regarding this bill, which makes no sense for our sector of activity.”