Ensemble Montréal mayoral candidate pledges $1M for community housing initiatives
Community organization programs she aims to reinforce include La Maison du Père's rent assistance bank, which provides interest-free loans covering up to three months of unpaid rent. Those loans must be repaid within five years.
"I want July 1 to no longer be a tragedy where families end up in hotels for months or on the street. These are preventable situations," Martinez Ferrada said in a news release published on Wednesday.
The former federal tourism minister and self-proclaimed "mayor of housing" found herself in hot water after the Journal de Montréal reported on her collecting a security deposit from a tenant who is renting out her family home — a violation of Quebec law.
She previously announced her intentions to abolish the city's "Bylaw for a Diverse Metropolis," which aimed to have developers include social housing in new projects but failed to produce any such unit within two years of its implementation.
Martinez Ferrada said at a news conference on Wednesday that she is committed to creating a housing bank to reserve affordable housing units on the market and transfer the leases to "nearly 100 households without housing on July 1" — an initiative presented in Ensemble Montréal's 2021 campaign.
She said her party would create a reliable municipal rental registry to protect renters' rights, noting that the current registry is spearheaded by Vivre en Ville and is not mandatory.
A report by Statistics Canada released last week shows the average asking price of rent in Montreal has shot up nearly 71 per cent since 2019.
Projet Montréal commits to new guarantee fund
Martinez Ferrada's announcement follows that of Projet Montréal mayoral candidate Luc Rabouin.
Monday, Rabouin said his party would implement a $100 million guarantee fund to help non-profit organizations secure funding for affordable housing.
"We will guarantee from 10 to 15 per cent of the amount of the banking loan to be sure they get all the money they need," Rabouin said.
He noted that his party would mandate the city's municipal housing office to contact all tenants for whom Quebec's rental tribunal (TAL) issues an eviction notice to assist them in finding another residence.
Rabouin said he intends to do more to reduce the wait time for issuing construction permits.
As of January, the city implemented a 120-day service standard for residential projects in all boroughs.
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Yahoo
02-07-2025
- Yahoo
Ensemble Montréal mayoral candidate pledges $1M for community housing initiatives
Mayoral hopeful Soraya Martinez Ferrada, the leader of Ensemble Montréal, said that if elected she would allot $1 million to "empower community organizations and expand successful housing initiatives" to prevent families from ending up on the streets. Community organization programs she aims to reinforce include La Maison du Père's rent assistance bank, which provides interest-free loans covering up to three months of unpaid rent. Those loans must be repaid within five years. "I want July 1 to no longer be a tragedy where families end up in hotels for months or on the street. These are preventable situations," Martinez Ferrada said in a news release published on Wednesday. The former federal tourism minister and self-proclaimed "mayor of housing" found herself in hot water after the Journal de Montréal reported on her collecting a security deposit from a tenant who is renting out her family home — a violation of Quebec law. She previously announced her intentions to abolish the city's "Bylaw for a Diverse Metropolis," which aimed to have developers include social housing in new projects but failed to produce any such unit within two years of its implementation. Martinez Ferrada said at a news conference on Wednesday that she is committed to creating a housing bank to reserve affordable housing units on the market and transfer the leases to "nearly 100 households without housing on July 1" — an initiative presented in Ensemble Montréal's 2021 campaign. She said her party would create a reliable municipal rental registry to protect renters' rights, noting that the current registry is spearheaded by Vivre en Ville and is not mandatory. A report by Statistics Canada released last week shows the average asking price of rent in Montreal has shot up nearly 71 per cent since 2019. Projet Montréal commits to new guarantee fund Martinez Ferrada's announcement follows that of Projet Montréal mayoral candidate Luc Rabouin. Monday, Rabouin said his party would implement a $100 million guarantee fund to help non-profit organizations secure funding for affordable housing. "We will guarantee from 10 to 15 per cent of the amount of the banking loan to be sure they get all the money they need," Rabouin said. He noted that his party would mandate the city's municipal housing office to contact all tenants for whom Quebec's rental tribunal (TAL) issues an eviction notice to assist them in finding another residence. Rabouin said he intends to do more to reduce the wait time for issuing construction permits. As of January, the city implemented a 120-day service standard for residential projects in all boroughs.
Hamilton Spectator
02-07-2025
- Hamilton Spectator
Montreal's move to biweekly trash pick up proving to be a slow process
MONTREAL - The garbage may be piling up and causing some disgruntlement on the sidewalks of a few Montreal streets, but municipal officials say it's all part of a plan to become a zero-waste city by the year 2030. And they say their plan is working. 'People are making progress in their thinking, realizing that when they participate in the recycling collection, the organic waste collection, that there is not much waste left,' Marie-Andrée Mauger said. As a member of the city's executive committee in charge of ecological transition in Mayor Valérie Plante's Projet Montréal party, Mauger is the point person overseeing a switch that has reduced the frequency of garbage collection in some neighbourhoods to a biweekly pickup. Three boroughs —St-Laurent, Verdun and Mercier-Hochelaga-Maisonneuve — have started implementing the plan, which is also a part of Plante's pledge to 'make Montreal the greenest city in North America.' But residents in Mercier-Hochelaga-Maisonneuve are not thrilled with the stench. Jonathan Haiun, a spokesman for Ligue 33, a community group in eastern Montreal that advocates for quality of life issues, said spacing out the collection hasn't had the desired effect since it was brought in late last year. 'The problem seems to be some people who just aren't composting or at least not doing it properly, and then a lot of the stuff that we do find in the garbage is just a mix of everything,' Haiun said. 'What we have been asking for since the beginning is that they go back to collecting garbage every week because we don't feel that that's actually an ecological measure.' According to most recent survey results conducted for the city and obtained by Ensemble Montreal, the opposition party at city hall, some 54 per cent of residents polled consider switching to trash pickup every two weeks 'unacceptable.' Meanwhile, other major Canadian cities have had biweekly pickup for years: Toronto since 2008, Halifax in 1999 and Vancouver in 2013. In each case, there were growing pains but all happened hand-in-hand with organic waste collection. Mauger said she expects once composting extends to 100 per cent of the city by the end of 2025, things will begin to shift. According to the Leger city survey, less than half of Montrealers use the so-called brown bin to dispose of organic waste and their knowledge of what goes in the bin has only risen by one per cent, to 41 per cent, since 2021. The survey results aren't surprising and transition rarely comes without complaint, said Karel Ménard, a Montreal environmentalist. 'I think it's a shared responsibility between the citizens, and the municipality, which has an obligation to have a clean and healthy city,' said Ménard, head of Front commun québécois pour une gestion écologique des déchets, an organization that promotes ecological waste management. 'Also, I would even say, the producers, because what we often see in the alleys are short-lived, disposable items, so there's also a problem of overconsumption.' Many municipalities in the Greater Montreal area and elsewhere in Quebec, have switched to biweekly pickup, if not every three weeks or monthly in some cases. But Greater Montreal is mainly suburbs with single-family homes, which isn't the case in the city's boroughs. 'There are 900,000 doors in Montreal, plus 40,000 businesses, industries, and institutions that have municipal collection,' Mauger said. 'We estimate that eighty per cent of the buildings in Montreal don't have their own driveway, so it's not really one size fits all.' The zero waste plan places an emphasis on reducing food waste, more composting and recycling. The city has also prohibited the use of single-use plastic items, like cups, utensils and straws. Opposition Coun. Stephanie Valenzuela of Ensemble Montréal said the polling results suggest Projet Montréal has a lot of work to do. 'The results really speak to the amount of energy and investment the city has been putting into informing residents on the goals that we're trying to achieve,' Valenzuela said. Valenzuela said the public reaction also contrasts with how the administration has portrayed itself as being innovative and avant-garde when it comes to the environment. 'We've seen that when it comes to their big promises, when it comes to the environment, they're actually missing the mark,' Valenzuela said. But Mauger is confident the city will be able to extend biweekly pickup to all 19 Montreal boroughs by 2029. 'What we see in this poll, it's also that three-quarters of the population are aware of the problem of sending too much waste to the landfill that's filling up at a very high pace,' Mauger said. 'And they want to do more to be part of the solution … so that's really promising too.' This report by The Canadian Press was first published July 2, 2025.
Yahoo
15-05-2025
- Yahoo
Montreal mayoral candidate took in illegal security deposit from tenant renting her home
A candidate running to become Montreal's next mayor collected a security deposit from a tenant who is renting out her family home — a violation of Quebec law. The story was first reported by the Journal de Montréal. Soraya Martinez Ferrada, the leader of Ensemble Montréal, the Official Opposition at city hall, has promised to make housing more accessible in the city, recently dubbing herself as la mairesse du logement, French for "the mayor of housing." When her four-bedroom, semi-detached bungalow in the city's Saint-Michel neighbourhood was listed in 2023 with the asking price of $2,850 per month, the listing stated that the tenant needed to pay a "one month security deposit for the appliances." "This will be given [back] when the landlord collects the keys," the listing read. Article 1904 of the Quebec Civil Code outlines that a landlord may not "exact any amount of money other than the rent, in the form of a deposit or otherwise." The listing for the candidate's home also stated that the tenant would have to agree to pay a $175 cleaning fee, which is also illegal. Even though Martinez Ferrada's home has a tenant, the listing can still be viewed on the real estate agent's website, but it doesn't mention anything about a deposit. CBC News was able to obtain the original listing with the stipulation about the security deposit and the cleaning fee through Centris, a real estate website with a vast inventory of properties on sale and for rent. Speaking with reporters on Monday, Martinez Ferrada said she entrusted a real estate agent with listing her property. She described requesting and collecting the security deposit as an "error in good faith." In Quebec, a deposit is only valid if the tenant pays it voluntarily and without any pressure from the landlord. $1,000 fee, not $2,850, Martinez Ferrada claims Despite the fee being described in the listing as a "one month" charge, Martinez Ferrada denied the Journal de Montréal report that the tenant paid her $2,850 — which would be the equivalent of one month of rent at the price that was listed. The mayoral candidate claims the tenant paid her $1,000 and that the deposit was not for rent but rather for appliances that she had purchased for the home. She said she only realized she had collected the sum from the tenant after a journalist contacted her about the situation. She said the money has since been given back to the tenant. The mayoral candidate did not address the cleaning fee during her news conference Monday, but a spokesperson for her party told CBC News that fee was never charged despite what was written in the listing. Only the $1,000 security deposit was charged, the spokesperson said. "It's a mistake that happens far too often in Montreal," Martinez Ferrada said Monday. "When mistakes happen, you have to take responsibility for them." Martinez Ferrada was elected as the MP for the Hochelaga riding in 2019. In 2023, she was appointed as the federal tourism minister under Justin Trudeau's Liberal government. In February of this year, she quit federal politics with the goal of becoming Montreal's next mayor. Later that month, she became the leader of Ensemble Montréal. She was the only candidate in the race. On Monday, the candidate said she would continue referring to herself as the "mayor of housing." "Part of being mayor is taking responsibility for your actions and that's what I'm doing today," she said. No one's above the law, Projet Montréal leader says In addition to being an MP and Canada's tourism minister, Martinez Ferrada also served as the parliamentary secretary for the federal housing minister. In this year's municipal elections, she'll be going up against Luc Rabouin, who took over from Valérie Plante as the leader for Projet Montréal in March. When asked about the deposit and fees included in the listing for Martinez Ferrada's property, Rabouin said no one was above the law, "especially if you aspire to become the mayor of Montreal." "Two-thirds of Montrealers are tenants and they absolutely need to understand and believe that the future mayor of Montreal understands their reality and will be there to defend their rights," he said. Francis Dolan, a community organizer with Regroupement information logement de Pointe-Saint-Charles, a housing rights group, said in an email the controversy "puts into perspective our elected representatives' poor understanding" of the reality of renters. Quebec's municipal elections will be held on Nov. 2. WATCH | Martinez Ferrada outlines her vision for the city:
