Could Montreal rents reach Toronto and Vancouver levels of unaffordability?

CBC

30-01-2025

Ken Cervera has lived in his two-bedroom apartment in Saint-Henri for 12 years. It's the longest time he's spent in one place in his adult life and, in a country far from his family, the apartment feels like even more than a home.
"As an immigrant, I'm alone here. All I have is my place. It's not just an apartment, it's my home, it's where I live, where I keep my memories. It's where I can just be," Cervera, 44, said Monday afternoon at a community centre in Montreal's Sud-Ouest borough, which encompasses Saint-Henri and other historically working-class neighbourhoods in the city.
It was Cervera's first time attending a workshop by his local tenants' association, the POPIR-Comité Logement. But after Quebec's rental tribunal, known in French as the Tribunal administratif du logement (TAL), made its highest rental increase recommendation in 30 years last week, Cervera wanted to learn more about his rights and about his community's efforts to mitigate the challenges of rising living costs.
Tenants living in homes where heat is not included in the rent could see their rent increase 5.9 per cent, based on the TAL's calculations of landlords' expenses. The amount could climb further, depending on things like apartment upgrades and property taxes.
Calling for a freeze
Tenants' rights groups are calling for a rent hike freeze until measures such as a mandatory rental registry and a ceiling on rent hikes are implemented. They worry the city's housing costs, known for their affordability, could soon catch up to Toronto and Vancouver, where the rents have exploded in recent decades.
"It's not human," said Cervera, who has seen his neighbourhood transform from a poor enclave with old architecture to a gentrified and hip strip with glossy businesses and new condo buildings.
According to POPIR, rents have risen 90 per cent in the Sud-Ouest in the past 10 years, compared to 59 per cent across Montreal.
"That's huge," said Catherine Fournier, a community organizer for POPIR, who was leading the workshop Monday. "I don't know how people are going to manage," she said.
Last year, local tenants were already calling POPIR saying the TAL's 2024 rent increase at four per cent was too high for them.
"Moving is a lot more expensive so people are at risk of accepting but struggling to pay and then potentially getting evicted if they can't pay," she said.
That's what Cervera is worried about — and times are tight. Though Cervera, who is from Mexico, has literature and language degrees from a university in Richmond, Va., and from the Université de Montréal, he's struggled to find employment in his field and, lately, has been working for a hotel.
He pays $725 a month in rent — cheap by most standards — but Cervera's salary barely covers his monthly expenses in addition to the years of student loans he still has to pay off.
"I really didn't expect this to be the case, after all the time and money I invested," he said.
WATCH | Recommended rent increase hits historic high in Quebec:
Here's how much rent could go up in Quebec in 2025
8 days ago
Duration 2:51
Eroding affordability
According to the Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation's fall 2024 rental market report, though Montreal rent growth slowed slightly in 2024, "it was still higher than average wage growth."
"As a result, rental market affordability in Montreal continued to erode over the past year," the report said.
The vacancy rate remains low in the city at 2.1 per cent. The average rent for a two-bedroom apartment was up by 6.3 per cent in the "purpose-built rental market" at $1,176 per month. Meanwhile, the average two-bedroom in the condominium apartment market is $1,724 and the vacancy rate in that sector is 1.4 per cent.
The CMHC report notes that apartments are "scarce in the lower rent ranges." It also found that the average rent increase for apartments that turned over to new tenants was much higher, at 18.7 per cent, than for those where the lease was renewed, at 4.7 per cent.
The good news, according to the report, is that Montreal has been building rental units at a faster pace than other Canadian cities, which has prevented the vacancy rate from getting worse.
Landlords in Quebec are not supposed to raise rent beyond recommended amounts between tenants, but the data suggests many do. Tenants in Quebec have the right to refuse or negotiate on rent increases with their landlords.
It's why Fontaine's group and its umbrella organization, the Coalition of Housing Committees and Tenants Associations of Quebec's (RCLALQ), has been calling for a mandatory rental registry.
"With a registry, there would be a lot fewer repossessions and renovictions. Because why are they doing those? It's to raise the rent," Fontaine said.
Eric Sansoucy, spokesperson for a Quebec landlords' association, said the increase suggested by the TAL will allow owners to catch up with the cost of inflation, which has decreased significantly in recent months.
"Landlords have seen their costs explode in recent years," said Sanscoucy, with the Corporation des Propriétaires Immobiliers du Québec.
Power imbalance
David Wachsmuth, the Canada research chair in urban governance and an assistant professor at McGill University, says he understands why tenants' groups believe the idea of a catch-up is unfair.
For decades, he said, there has been a power imbalance favourable to landlords in Montreal.
"They have an easy time finding tenants. The vacancy rate is super low, so they can ask for whatever they want, basically, and tenants have no choice but to accept it," Wachsmuth said.
While Montreal rents remain lower than much of the country, that gap is shrinking.
"It's a really, really, really worrying time because what we should be saying, nationally, is what would it take to make Toronto and Vancouver look more like Montreal, not the other way around," he said.
Wachsmuth called the TAL's recommended rent increase "pretty striking."
"It means effectively endorsing an unsustainably fast growth in the cost of living for Montreal renters and Quebec renters in general," he said.
Montreal distinguishes itself with low-rise apartment buildings that have historically been affordable, he explained. "In contrast to Toronto and Vancouver, which have all these single-family homes and all these towers, Montreal doesn't have much of either of those. It's a special place," Wachsmuth said.