Cost of getting around rising about 3% Tuesday
Set by the Autorité régionale de transport métropolitain, the Montreal region's transit authority, the increases will hike the price for most public transit fares by an average of three per cent.
The transit authority sets the new fare rates every year based on inflation, though says it aims to limit the financial effects for riders.
The cost of a monthly pass for Zone A, which covers the island of Montreal, will increase from $100 to $104.50. Those qualifying for a reduced monthly pass now pay $60 per month, but will soon pay $62.75.
Bundles of 10 regular fares will increase to $34.25 from the current $33.25 and to $23 from $22.25 for seniors and students.
Single and two-trip regular fares will remain priced at $3.75 and $7 and at $2.75 and $5 for seniors and students.
The complete list of new fares across all zones is .
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Montreal Gazette
2 days ago
- Montreal Gazette
Hanes: Beyond the moving day blues, July 1 has become a day of upheaval and heartbreak
Another moving day has come and gone in Montreal. There was a time in the not-so-distant past when the annual apartment shuffle was a marker of new beginnings: a fresh start with new roommates; a step toward independence for young adults; a merging of worldly possessions for couples getting serious; or a new wrung on the property ladder for growing families. Now July 1 is often a day of upheaval and even heartbreak. Despite desperate searching over the past few months, some Montrealers found themselves unhoused after the annual lease renewal date. A week before the big move, groups that work with renters estimated 2,000 households across Quebec hadn't yet found a new place to call home, including nearly 270 in Montreal. The number of tenants at risk was higher this year than the 1,600 who hadn't secured a roof over their heads at the same point a year earlier. And groups were expecting grim new records to be set for people becoming unhoused this July 1. Many of the unluckiest Montrealers will bunk with family or crash with friends until they can find something. Some will have no choice but to live in their cars. Others will join the growing ranks of those lining up at emergency shelters or camping rough on the margins of society. But even for those who did manage to sign a new lease, moving day has become a source of enormous stress, as the scarcity and cost of housing exacts a toll. The crisis in the availability and affordability of housing now affects a wide swath of the population across Canada, both renters and buyers alike. And Montreal, once a city of cheap 3½s and plentiful triplexes, has not been immune. Some sobering statistics were released on the eve of the annual moving day that speak to the depth and breadth of the problem. They show how Montreal is catching up with Vancouver or Toronto when it comes to the cost of housing. They also expose how much work it will take to return to pre-pandemic levels of affordability (never mind the good ol' days of decades past). In a new quarterly report on rent prices, Statistics Canada last week revealed that there has been a surge in asking rents in Montreal since 2019. The average cost of a two-bedroom apartment is $1,930, up from $1,130 five years ago. Montreal now ranks 17th on the list of most expensive Canadian cities to lease an apartment. It's still a far cry from Vancouver, where the monthly rent averages $3,170, or Toronto, where it's $2,690, or even Ottawa, where it's $2,490. But Montreal is catching up and prices could go higher — especially after Quebec's Tribunal administratif du logement prescribed a 5.9 per cent average rent hike for 2025. It also explains why moving day has been filled with such trepidation in recent years, because new leases tend to be offered at higher prices. But simply finding a new home, regardless of the price, is also increasingly difficult. At the end of 2024, the overall vacancy rate was a paltry 2.1 per cent in Montreal. But it's even tighter in certain neighbourhoods or for larger, family-size units. That's slightly better than the previous rate of 1.5 per cent recorded in January 2024, but both figures are still below the three per cent threshold that is considered the sign of a healthy rental market. The Canadian Mortgage and Housing Corporation issued a report last week on housing affordability. The bottom line is that the amount of housing constructed each year needs to double in the coming decade to bring costs in line with income levels. 'Compared to a projected rate of about 250,000 new housing units annually until 2035, Canada needs to increase housing starts to around 430,000 to 480,000 units per year to restore affordability,' the CMHC report states. 'The need to increase the housing supply remains critical.' That's an ambitious target that won't be reached without boosting the workforce in construction, upping private sector investment, improving technological advancements and incorporating innovations like modular housing to speed up development. But how much construction needs to be sped up varies by region. Edmonton, for instance, is on track to meet projected demand. Montreal, on the other hand, is one of the cities that has the most ground to make up. To build enough new housing stock to put a dent in affordability, Montreal has to almost triple construction, creating 72,175 new units a year, up from the current 23,287, the CMHC says. And if the pace doesn't pick up dramatically, real estate experts told La Presse prices will continue to soar. There are other aspects of the report that are eye-opening as well. First of all, the CMHC's measure of affordability is shifting. 'There's no settled definition of housing affordability, but it relates housing costs to income. In housing market analysis, a common convention is to compare the monthly cost of purchasing an average home with the average or median income,' the CMHC states. 'Unfortunately, house prices have risen so much in our most expensive cities that the average household wouldn't qualify to buy the average home under current mortgage rules. As a result, that metric has become obsolete.' The CMHC is also tempering expectations about what affordability will look like — even with a massive construction boom. The report notes that home prices have accelerated since the pandemic. In Montreal, the annual rate of growth between 2004 and 2019 was 4.7 per cent. But between 2019 and 2024, it shot up to 10.2 per cent a year on average. 'Restoring affordability to levels last seen two decades ago isn't realistic, especially after the post-pandemic price surge. COVID-19 significantly changed the affordability landscape across the country,' the CMHC report states. 'As a result, we're changing our aspiration to restoring affordability to levels seen just before the pandemic.' Considering the average price of a single-family home in Montreal reached an all-time high of $625,107 in May after nearly doubling in the previous decade, while the average condo hit $428,000, a 70 per cent jump from 10 years earlier, there's a long way to go. Besides accelerating construction, what kind of housing is built will also be crucial to addressing the housing crunch, including off-market, cooperative and social units. But since it takes years to get zoning changes, and another year or two to build, nothing much seems likely to change before next July 1. Montrealers will hearing the moving day blues for a while yet.
Montreal Gazette
3 days ago
- Montreal Gazette
Moving day means big rent jumps for many Montrealers
By Jason Magder Carlos Quan, his wife and their two grown children bid farewell to their home of 17 years in Villeray on Tuesday. They moved into a two-bedroom apartment in Montreal North, which at $1,400 per month will cost double what they are currently paying. 'The landlord here took over the building to do renovations, and he started already,' said Quan, who hails from Guatemala. 'For my family, it's hard to leave here. This is where we moved when we first came to Canada.' Quan was among roughly 100,000 Montrealers who changed homes around July 1, Quebec's unofficial moving day. This year, rents have increased by a record amount over the previous year at around 5.9 per cent. Most people who spoke to a reporter on Tuesday said they would be feeling the pinch of sharp rent increases. 'We're very disappointed,' said Steve, who didn't want his last name to be published. 'We'll be paying $800 more per month.' Steve said his landlord repossessed the apartment where he, his wife and his four-year-old daughter were living for the last six years. They will be moving to another place just about 400 metres away. 'We're going to tighten our belts; we'll stop eating and we're not going to be travelling for the next 10 years,' he said. Céline Camus, community organizer with the Villeray Housing Committee, was cycling through the neighbourhood to see if anyone needed help, or if there were illicit evictions. 'We met a woman who was paying $1,250 per month, when the previous tenant was paying $800,' Camus said. 'Some landlord groups on Facebook are talking together to make sure that the rents reach a certain price in this neighbourhood, so it's not a free market.' She said this year's sharp increases have taken a toll on renters. But illicit or unethical landlord behaviour also plays a part. Camus added that tenants often don't want to challenge steep increases in their rents at the TAL — the province's rental board — because they don't want to earn a bad reputation for future landlords who may refuse to rent to them. Complaints to the TAL are listed publicly. Yourri Alcindor moved Tuesday to Villeray, because he found a one-bedroom apartment that cost roughly $300 less per month than what he was paying in Plateau-Mont-Royal. 'I've been in Quebec only three years, and since that time I know rents have gone crazy,' Alcindor said. 'It's a big moving day, but it's going rather smoothly. The truck is double the price today than usual, but there aren't a lot of cars on the road, I found friends to help me and found a good parking spot.' Roughly 900 households aren't able to find a new place they can afford as of July 1. The City of Montreal's housing office helps to find them temporary apartments, or hotel rooms until they can find something permanent. Anyone who needs the city's help is urged to call the 311 hotline.
Montreal Gazette
4 days ago
- Montreal Gazette
More than 270 Montreal households on hunt for new home just hours ahead of moving day
By Moving day traditionally brings chaos to Montreal's streets, but those on the front lines of the housing crunch say hundreds of renters are still searching for a new place to call home just hours ahead of July 1. 'Right now, we have more than 270 households supported by our services,' Isabelle Girard-Fortier, director of rental services at the Office municipal d'habitation de Montréal, said in an interview Monday afternoon with The Gazette. 'So, these are households that are still looking for accommodations, but there are also some of these households that are already temporarily staying with us.' The OMHM has rooms blocked off at partnering hotels for those who find themselves without an apartment. But she pointed out those are only temporary and maybe not the most comfortable option for some, such as large families. The municipal housing office can also help shelter people's belongings. Quebec's yearly mass migration takes place on July 1 as that is when the majority of leases begin, but that means many residents are stuck looking for a new apartment at the same time. FRAPRU, a housing advocacy group, noted that 2025 has been 'an extremely difficult year' so far. Tenants are facing 'virtually historic rent increases,' said FRAPRU spokesperson Véronique Laflamme. She cited a recent study from Statistics Canada that found Montreal's rental prices have jumped by 71 per cent since 2019. 'We feel like we haven't seen everything yet with these rent increases' taking effect Tuesday, she said. 'We're really worried that even more tenants will no longer be able to make ends meet and that even more will become impoverished, even though we've already heard year after year from food banks that housing affordability is preventing people from eating properly.' The rising costs are particularly hard on low-income households, particularly seniors, she added. 'The housing search period was very tough because tenants, basically realizing that it would be difficult to absorb the new rent increase, were looking for solutions and realizing that the available rental units were far too expensive,' Laflamme said. Montrealers of all stripes have asked for help when it comes to finding a new apartment, according to the OMHM. The level of demand is around the same as it was in 2024. 'It really varies,' Girard-Fortier said of those who require assistance. 'Last year, we had a lot of single women versus single men. Then, for a few years now, it's increasingly families with children, too.' The office assists renters all over the city, but Girard-Fortier said the Villeray—St-Michel—Parc-Extension, Hochelaga-Maisonneuve and Montreal North areas are among some of the hot spots this year. Along with other organizations, both the OMHM and FRAPRU will be open on moving day, as well as in the coming days. Their teams will be available to help anyone who needs it. The City of Montreal says anyone who still hasn't found a new home in time should call 311 for assistance.
