Let's fact-check some of the claims made about it.

Claim number one.

There's just way more people than there are homes.

Fact! Over the last 20 years, the number of homes built was actually higher than the amount of new households, and that includes newcomers.

But why did rent still jump across the whole province over the last four years?

In Montreal, rent went up by 27%, and that's the lowest of any city in Quebec.

Quebec's construction association says here's why.

They're busy building condos, and small ones in particular.

What's missing? Affordable units that can house larger families and more social housing.

So the problem isn't necessarily how much we're building, but what we're building.

Experts say we're not going to get out of this affordability crisis when what's being built isn't necessarily what's needed, and it's out of many people's budgets.

Claim number two.

Social housing and affordable housing are equally helpful.

Fact! They're not.

One is far more impactful than the other.

Social housing is owned by the province, and rent is based on a portion of a tenant's income.

In this case, that's 25%.

Right now, there are about 16,000 households on a waitlist for social housing in Montreal alone.

Affordable housing is based on market value and isn't necessarily affordable to the average person.

Let's say the average 4.5 costs $2,000 a month.

Then $1,500 might be considered affordable.

Just a few years ago, $1,500 in rent would have been the average price, or even expensive.

That's why advocates don't want the government to lump social and affordable housing funds together and are pushing for more social housing.

Since 2018, the government has funded 23,000 units of social and affordable housing without distinguishing the two.

The Société d'Habitation du Québec, which manages social housing funds, says the units should be built by 2028.

But it couldn't confirm how many of those units will actually be social housing.

Local organizations need to apply for subsidies to make that happen.

It estimates it'll be about 50-50.

We've heard this claim over and over again.

But is it true?

Claim number three.

The housing crisis is caused by high immigration numbers.

Yes, Québec did see a large increase in its population last year.

But there was already a housing crisis before Québec took in those 270,000 temporary immigrants.

Let's take Québec's North Shore, where virtually no immigrants settled last year.

Since 2020, rent still went up by 31% for available units there.

Remember in the middle of the pandemic, when all immigration halted?

All over the province, the vacancy rate still went down while rents skyrocketed, even though we weren't letting anyone new in.

Recent reports even show that over the last 20 years, there were still more housing starts than there were new households.

And that includes newcomers.

Claim number four.

Lease transfers are bad for landlords.

Fact.

Lease transfers were intended to let a tenant out of their lease consequence-free by passing it over to a new tenant.

This was seen as being a good thing for both parties, since landlords would keep getting rent payments without having to find a new tenant themselves.

In Québec, it used to be that landlords couldn't refuse a lease transfer unless they had serious concerns that the new tenant couldn't pay.

That changed when Bill 31 was passed into law.

Landlords complained that they didn't have enough control over their tenants, while tenants claimed that lease transfers were an important tool to keep rents low.

But is that true?

Short answer, yes.

A lot of landlords realized that they could make a lot of profit from keeping their unit empty for a while and then hiking up the rent as much as they want when a new tenant moves in, getting away from the yearly increases recommended by the rental board.

But what about Section G of your lease?

Doesn't it do the same thing?

Well, not really.

Landlords have to disclose the lowest rent paid in the last 12 months, allowing the tenant to negotiate the new rent or contest it at the rental board.

But if the unit was empty that whole year, it won't apply, and some landlords simply don't fill out Section G in the hopes that the new tenant won't notice.

So are lease transfers over-over?

Well, no.

Some landlords will still accept them.

But generally speaking, it'll be much harder.

Claim number five.

Short-term rentals are eating up the housing supply.

If you've been following the housing crisis, you'll remember the outrage caused by short-term rental platforms like Airbnb.

While some owners use the platform to rent out their own place for short-term stays, landlords also saw the opportunity to make big profit.

We've covered many stories of tenants who are rent evicted or pushed out by owners who effectively turn the building into hotels.

After all, if you can choose between renting to a tenant for $1,200 a month or making $4,000 a month off short-term rentals, sounds tempting.

That was a big problem pre-pandemic.

That's when housing experts say they saw a surge in evictions from properties that ended up as short-term rentals.

When tourism halted during lockdowns, a lot of those units were actually put back on the rental market.

Now tourism has rebounded and the trend is reversing again.

But this time, Quebec has way more restrictions in place.

In most of Montreal's boroughs, you can only put your primary residence on platforms like Airbnb, with very few exceptions.

Owners, including landlords, have to register with the province and must include the registration number on the listing or face fines up to $50,000.

Of course, there are people who get around the rules and enforcement has been tricky.

So are short-term rentals to blame for the housing crisis?

Well, they don't help.

Evictions are the number one reason people end up homeless in Quebec.

The vacancy rate is abysmal and there aren't enough large units fit for families.

Turning housing units into short-term rentals contributes to that squeeze.

Barcelona and New York have outright banned short-term rentals.

Experts believe Montreal doesn't need to go that far.

Home sharing can be good, but they believe that running a short-term rental as a business should be banned.

Claim number six is just too expensive for governments to solve the problem.

Fact.

Experts say that kind of thinking is short-sighted and doesn't consider the ripple effects when there isn't enough social housing.

Just delivering emergency services to someone is very costly.

If someone's incarcerated, very costly.

If they're in the hospital, even more costly.

All those are paid through taxes.

Eventually, those who complain about high taxes will have to pay more to healthcare systems, policing, and so on.

When you take all those factors into account and add up all the costs that fall on taxpayers anyway, government housing can prove more cost-effective and offer people more dignity.

Not to mention, research shows that when there's a lack of social housing, there's more competition for the few affordable units out there and that creates pressure on the whole housing market.

It's like the trickle-down effect in reverse.

The simplest way to solve this really is for the government to say it's not realistic for people who are under a certain income level to look for housing in the private rental market.

We'll make sure there's enough of it out there.

The federal government used to ease the lack of affordable units with social housing and that's the case for many countries.

But Canada's been disinvesting for decades and provinces aren't always keen on filling that gap.

Quebec axed its social housing fund two years ago.

It created a new fund that lumps together market and social housing.

Now, why is that a problem?

Check out this fact check.

Experts say it'll take billions of dollars over the next few decades for Quebec to catch up with demand.

But the ripple of solving a housing problem could solve other big social expenditures.

Claim number seven.

There's just too many barriers to building homes.

Quebec needs to build 150,000 new units per year over the next decade to preserve affordability.

But in 2023, only about 30,000 started construction.

Why is that?

Partially because those who want to build homes, sometimes that's the government, but mostly private developers, have some hoops to jump through.

Let's break down which ones are very real and some that might be overstated.

Barrier one.

There's just not much open space to build in cities.

Now, that one is very real.

Urban sprawl has reached the limits of where people can reasonably commute from.

And within metropolitan areas, there's virtually no space left that hasn't been developed.

Compared to other Canadian cities, a lot of Montreal is already multifamily housing.

But efforts to develop green space do run into environmental and resident opposition.

Which brings us to barrier number two.

Or not in my backyard mentality.

Overstated? Maybe.

NIMBYism does shut down some housing developments.

A low-cost rental project was axed in Montreal's West Island after residents raised concerns about property value and possible criminal activity.

But some experts say it isn't as big of a problem in Montreal, where most of our housing stock is already low-rise apartments, compared to places like the Toronto area, which is mostly single-family homes.

Barrier number three.

Zoning.

Now, that one is overstated.

People often point the finger to restrictive zoning laws that limit densification by, say, limiting the height of buildings or the type of housing that can be built.

Most cities do have strict zoning rules, but that might be overstated for Montreal.

Like I said, a lot of the cities already zoned for multifamily housing.

And policy's been changing.

Toronto recently banned the conversion of duplexes and triplexes into single-family homes.

And Bill 31 gave cities the power to ignore some of their own urban planning rules and allows for the conversion of things like basements and garages into their own housing unit.

Barrier four.

Red tape and bureaucracy.

Now, those are overstated.

A recent study showed that those factors are not the main obstacles to solving Quebec's housing crisis.

Developers are.

Again, Bill 31 allowed cities to ignore their own bylaws to fast-track construction and Montreal introduced measures to reduce delays in obtaining building permits.

Trends in the housing sector over the last 20 years show that the industry actually thrived under existing rules.

There were massive investments in housing, and yet prices went up exponentially.

Why?

Private sector developers simply don't want to build affordable housing, and social housing hasn't been the government's priority.