A single tenant in a Montreal apartment block has halted a multimillion-dollar development project in a standoff that has focused fresh attention on the lack of affordable housing in major Canadian cities.
Bird in a rent controlled bedsit refuses to move without lots of compo. Well, play the system etc. This means 176 “luxury” apartments won’t get built.
So, as housing markets go, this means there won’t be 176 affordable places either. Because 176 richer households won’t be able to move up into hte luxury flats, leaving the less luxury ones for poorer people to move into.
This bird is the reason there are 176 homeless households that is. But, you know, play the game by the rules already set, she’s looking for compo.
She pays £238/month rent. The story implies that this rate is permanently capped; and that she can’t be evicted (no equivalent of our Section 21 notice). Therefore she effectively owns a right to a lifetime cheap & secure tenancy, and she’d be mad to give it up for just £12,000 in compensation. They might as well carve out a small studio in the new development just for her; and let her live there on the same terms as before.
@AndrewM: that’s probably what they’ll end up doing…
Although it’s Canada, which is rivalling California for ‘most woke place on earth’ so who knows?
Well AndrewM, if someone wanted to resume the old family home and evict me, I’d be pissed off too.
As you point out, she’d be crazy to give up a lifetime right to cheap and secure tenancy. If Montreal doesn’t like this, they need to change their laws. Of course the Guardian would then be howling about the horrid capitalists hurling these poor renters out into the street.
People play broken systems throughout the western world.
Over here a third-world chancer can show up at Heathrow either with or quickly followed by 2 wives and at least 6 children, then demand and be given (after a brief period in a 4 star hotel) an “acceptable” 5 bed home in a nice part of London to preserve his human rights. Heaven forbid he should be offered accommodation elsewhere. Like the Canadian lady he won’t be budging until he gets exactly what he wants – and a pony.
There is, however, plenty of affordable housing back in Asia where the bulk of new ‘Canadians’ come from.
I hear they have the internet in Asia, so why do they need to move to Montreal?
Rachman had a point.
The Canadian government seems to think if they bring in more immigration that all the people will cheerfully go to the northern or interior provinces and territories rather than just all wash up in a handful of cities.
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While she is clearly right to hold out for as much as she can get, the big picture – seen from the point of view of society as a whole – is that she has been housed at an unfairly low rent for a decade and now expects a continuing subsidy or big lump sum rather than being grateful for her past good fortune.
It may be that her personal circumstances mean that she should be supported – the aricle does not explain why she does not have a job – but it is quite unfair that this burden should fall on the unfortunate landlord who happens to be housing her now. This is the sort of burden that should be shared fairly across all society – or in other words, her rent should be a fair market rate (and therefore she wouild have no incentive to hold up the project) paid from taxes.
Ironically, her lawyer is quoted as saying “This is a question of the greater good. Development that should benefit all residents of Montreal and not just a handful of wealthy investors.”. It certainly is a question of te greater good, but the current beneficiary is not any kind of investor, but someone getting housingat an unfairly low rent.
So freely entered into contracts not enforceable – because of “the collective” – and in any case think yourself lucky, bitch. Ain’t socialism wonderful….
@BniC – doubly true of Britain. Few of the million a year, wonderfully ‘diverse’ new arrivals seem to want to be crofters in Caithness & Sutherland, for some unaccountable reason.