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Moving Day, when a critical mass of Quebec leases expire, is just around the corner.

July 1 has always been a chaotic and stressful time, as Montrealers compete to rent moving vans and get dibs on scarce parking spaces so they don’t have to carry that heavy couch too far after squeezing it down the spiral stairs.

But in the midst of a housing crisis, it’s become a time of desperation for many, as greater numbers of tenants are being forced to move and then realizing they have no place to go.

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The city began bracing for a boom in Montrealers who find themselves unhoused back in May, when Mayor Valérie Plante announced an action plan. The number of Montrealers requiring help nearly tripled from 350 in 2019 to 900 last year. Montreal has upped its emergency aid budget to $3.5 million this year from $1.5 million five years ago.

Besides trying to help people find new digs, the city has been preparing to offer emergency shelter and storage services to those who have no luck. After last July 1, the city put up 134 households in hotels. The average stay was two months.

But that’s a Band-Aid on a gaping wound.

Montreal’s rental vacancy rate dipped to 1.5 per cent in January, down from two per cent in 2022, according to a report by the Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation. And Montreal is still faring better than other places. In Quebec City, for instance, it’s only 0.9 per cent. Across the province, vacancies sit at 1.3 per cent. The market is considered balanced when there is turnover in three per cent of rental units.

And it’s not only hard to find a home to rent — it’s more expensive. A recent report by the Regroupement des comités logement et associations de locataires du Québec (RCLALQ) found that the average monthly rent in Montreal rose 27 per cent between 2020 and 2024. That’s steep but, again, not as bad as other parts of Quebec. For instance, rents spiked 44 per cent in Sherbrooke over that period and jumped 50 per cent in Trois-Rivières.

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The RCLALQ found the average monthly cost of a 4½ across Quebec soared from $1,222 per month in 2020 to $1,504 in 2023. And good luck if you need a three-bedroom: that will run you $1,908 a month or more. The days of Montreal being a renters’ paradise are long gone.

An earlier study by the tenants’ rights organization found a surge in evictions. The rate jumped 135 per cent in 2023, as abusive tactics like renovictions, transforming housing into short-term vacation rentals or letting units fall into decrepitude multiplied the misery.

The Quebec government recently passed a law putting a three-year moratorium on renovictions, except in limited circumstances, such as the owners planning to live in an apartment themselves. It also lowered the age at which seniors who have been in their dwelling for at least 10 years cannot be ousted, to 65 from 70. But Housing Minister France-Élaine Duranceau also introduced a controversial law restricting lease transfers, which many tenants’ groups contested.

Given the cost of housing is increasingly out of reach for many Quebecers, the RCLALQ says decision-makers need to look at non-market solutions, meaning more social and subsidized housing.

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Plante has tried to make social, affordable and family housing a priority during her two terms in office. But her administration has had mixed results. Her so-called 20-20-20 bylaw, which requires developers to include a certain proportion of social and affordable units in their projects or else pay penalties, has so far failed to create any new dwelling, although some apartments have been pledged.

Most developers haven’t been playing ball, forking over the fine instead. They are also disgruntled over the endless red tape involved in getting building permits. The city recently promised a 120-day deadline to fast-track requests that don’t require major zoning changes, as all levels of government look to spur a housing construction boom.

The mayor also recently unveiled a new urban plan for Montreal that aims to build 200,000 new dwellings by 2050, up to 20 per cent of it being non-market alternatives like co-operatives and social housing. Plante also has a grand vision for a “city within a city” involving 20,000 new units on the old Blue Bonnets site, where subsidized units would be prominent. The project has been stalled for years, with the prime 75-acre site collecting weeds.

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The problem is execution. Who will fund and build it all? The cost of putting in all the municipal services like sewers and roads at Blue Bonnets is pegged at $1.4 billion.

Despite higher levels of government loosening the purse strings as the housing availability and affordability crisis becomes a national priority, breaking ground on new social, subsidized or affordable housing projects has proved easier said than done.

And the sad reality is that the social housing Montreal already has is in high demand — and shoddy condition. The city’s auditor general recently shone a light on the Office municipal d’habitation de Montréal, and what she found was sobering.

At the end of 2022, there were 23,000 households on a waiting list for a unit. The average time in the queue is 5.8 years. There were 4,912 requests for housing that year, but only 3,342 qualified. Just 1,215 units became available in 2022, and 763 of them were given to families or individuals already living in subsidized housing.

Much of this is due to a maintenance backlog among the 838 buildings, comprising 20,810 units, in the OMHM’s portfolio. Every year, about 1,400 vacant units need to be renovated to bring them up to standard, according to the auditor general. But delays in getting repairs done mean badly needed apartments often sit empty for months, if not years.

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As of November 2023, 61 per cent of buildings were in bad or very bad condition, requiring $1 billion in investment to make them habitable over the next five years.

Meanwhile, the unhoused population in Quebec hit 10,000 in 2022, up 44 per cent from four years earlier, according to a head count done by the public health institute. Nearly half of the unhoused people are in Montreal — and anecdotal evidence suggests the ranks of the most vulnerable have continued to climb.

The provincial and federal governments last week announced $57 million in funding for emergency shelters and transitional housing, which will add about 521 beds in the coming two years for those who would otherwise be on the street.

The causes of the housing crisis are multiple and complex. A surge in permanent and temporary immigration has boosted the population to record levels; a shortage of dwellings has made them more valuable — i.e., more expensive — be it to rent or own; inflation and higher interest rates have made home ownership more costly for everyone, while slowing down the pace of new construction.

There are no easy answers for getting shovels in the ground. And there are certainly no quick fixes for those despairing about where they’re going to live after July 1.

It’s enough to give Montrealers a case of the Moving Day blues.

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