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Renewing the Urban Fabric: Social Housing in Montreal

Affleck, Gavin

The Canadian Architect, 2004-07, Vol.49 (7), p.17

Toronto: IQ Business Media

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  • Título:
    Renewing the Urban Fabric: Social Housing in Montreal
  • Autor: Affleck, Gavin
  • Assuntos: Affordable housing ; Architects ; Architecture ; Cities ; Farms ; Housing cooperatives ; Neighborhoods ; Sustainability ; Urban planning
  • É parte de: The Canadian Architect, 2004-07, Vol.49 (7), p.17
  • Descrição: Montreal has long enjoyed a reputation as one of North America's better urban environments-a city where people live and work in downtown neighbourhoods and where streets are animated, architecturally interesting, and safe. As the physical expression of firmly rooted social and political traditions, Montreal's quality of life has persevered while economic cycles have come and gone. The latent potential of this unique urbanity is finally being realized and the city is presently undergoing a major housing boom. As opposed to larger North American cities where mediocre commercial projects circle the core, Montreal's second ring has benefited from economic stagnation as an inadvertent agent of preservation. For more than two decades, Montreal has bravely presented a smile with mostly missing teeth, but today the gaps-parking lots, abandoned gas stations, and empty lots-are filling in. Social housing projects in Montreal are organized by three forms of tenure: habitation loyer modique or HLMs which are administered by the para-municipal housing authority of the Office municipal d'habitation (OMH); projects developed by independent non-profit corporations (organismes sans but lucratif, or OSBLs); and housing cooperatives. As the ubiquity of acronyms suggest, bureaucracy is a fact of life in housing and all three forms of tenure are further regulated by the Socit d'habitation du Qubec (SHQ) and the Housing Service of the City of Montreal. For more than 25 years, the construction of new HLMs was the most important contribution to the social housing stock, but in 1994 the reorganization of federal and provincial financing brought an end to its construction. Today, social housing is principally funded by the Accs-Logis program, a provincial initiative, and the Logement abordable Qubec program, a fund established in 2002 with assistance from the federal government. With the objective of delivering 5,000 new units, officials at the SHQ and the City of Montreal have put considerable effort in recent years into reforming their programs, including a move towards smaller, less institutional projects and an accompanying semantic shift from "social housing" to "affordable housing." In order to help meet this demand, the OMH recently resumed the construction of new HLMs after a ten-year hiatus. Evolving within this critical context, Montreal has the potential to be the Amsterdam of the Americas-a city continuously reinventing the architecture of its housing and its sense of urbanity. The four fundamental ingredients of Amsterdam's creativity in housing-a heritage of unique housing types, a coherent urban fabric, a tradition of benevolent socialism, and a spirit of tolerance-are also found in Montreal. Montreal's plex, with its firewalls, high-density stacking of units and exterior stairs, is a unique housing type that grew out of the specific conditions of Montreal's history and geography. As both the fundamental historic reference and the model for new improvisations it embodies the past and the future of Montreal housing. The beliefs of the city's two founding peoples converge on a common idea of a benevolent society-the French majority is culture-centred and paternalistic, while the English minority has a long history as one of Canada's most politically progressive communities. Add to this the dynamic element of Montreal's vibrant immigrant communities and the conditions are in place for the creation of challenging, cosmopolitan housing.
  • Editor: Toronto: IQ Business Media
  • Idioma: Inglês
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