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| Jeanne Mance project |
Mayor Jean Drapeau swore tooth and nail that he'd never let the project get built.
Drapeau had a vision of his beloved east side attracting its share of beautiful architecture and investment rather than this sort of charity skid-row housing.
He knew the project would cripple the development of the area east of the Main.
Alas, Drapeau was supplanted as mayor for a term by Sarto Fournier in 1956 and the slum clearance project was built and the 788 apartments over 7 hectares of primo real estate has been a blight on the city's landscape ever since.
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| As it might eventually look |
The facility includes something like 200 parking spaces, which is a very posh amenity for someone who needs to have their rent subsidized. That's a little like offering an extra room for your personal valet at the homeless shelter.
Most full-paying residents of the neighbourhood can only dream of having a private parking spots, but outsiders can rent the spaces in the Jeanne Mance projects for $120 a month, so somehow the city is in the parking lot business thanks to this project.
The project also contains two full-sized basketball courts, which is also a waste for anybody who realizes that kids rarely use full-size courts, they tend to stand under the hoop.
Personally I would just demolish the place and resettle all of its occupants in less valuable parts of town and sell off the property to increase, rather than deplete, the city's tax base.
So on Oct. 16 at 7 p.m. there will be an info session about the remake of the area held at the Marie-Guerin Lajoie room at UQAM (on Ste. Catherine).
The borough is only aiming to dis-enclave the site, to use their word, which I think means building walking paths from one street to another. They also want to make it prettier on the north and south sides.
They also and on 12 November 7 p.m., same place, there will be public hearings, but you've got to register a few days in advance if you want to talk, do that at the Ville Marie borough site.
Have you walked through the Habitations since the 1980s? You're wrong about it being slummy now. It's really nice, big old trees, peaceful atmosphere, resident vegetable gardens, play parks for kids. Go have a look.
ReplyDeleteI'd live there any time, but I don't qualify.
Also, re the parking spots: many are rented out by the Habitations organization to people who don't live there but who live or work nearby.
There were a lot of problems with drug dealing at the southwestern corner of that facility in recent years, but the niceness of the place is not my main focus anyway.
ReplyDeleteThe city is not only giving this valuable, coveted land away for free, it's actually paying people to inhabit the area. Makes absolutely no sense on any level as they are missing out on a lucrative opportunity to increase their income and thereby slow down these ridiculous tax increases they keep subjecting us to.
This ghettoization of a lucky entitled elite of poor into the most valuable land in the city hurts us all, as it wipes out any taxes that could be collected from normal units on that land.
The poor and retired folk living there don't need to inhabit the city's primest real estate, particularly as they are not employed, so they can be resettled a couple of miles to the east or in Lasalle or something. If they are gainfully employed in the area they can afford apartments.
After that, let someone repopulate that area with far more condo units, the more the better for the poor, because the more you build the more prices stay down.
Right... So lets move the poor elsewhere. Sell the land to promoters with the promise of building replacement housing for the poor (which will not happen, as we've seen many many times). Lets send them all to other parts of the city to spread their misery and drug dealings and where the tourists won't be exposed to them. Right? The fact that the city is already giving away its properties (Festival de Jazz anyone?) and has the most idiotic mayor since I don't know when is telling enough.
ReplyDeleteHave you been downtown lately? Have you walked the supposedly commercial streets? They are lined with empty stores and stalled condo projects. I do not see the point in demolishing part of one of the most interesting neighborhood in Montreal for the sake of appearance and under the assumption that the city would be competent enough to make anything worthwhile with the land.
But overall, rich or poor, you have the right to inhabit the city wherever you want/can. I am surprised and quite disapointed with this post.
Um, the city doesn't have to "make anything worthwhile with the land" it just has to sell it off to someone who will build something and then the city can rake in the taxes and property transfer taxes.
ReplyDeleteIt's a big pot of money they're snubbing in favour of something that actually costs money.
I don't really understand why there is subsidized housing anyway, they can never get enough of it to make it fair for all poor people, so it becomes a lottery that only benefits a few.
They should take that same social housing cash and simply subsidize rents for a far greater number of poor.
They should also encourage urban density as the more property that gets built, the lower prices will become.
And yeah about the beaten-down shape of downtown retail strips - the influx of people could really benefit those businesses.
There's an inadequate supply of housing in that area for those involved with the nearby French universities, so from a nationalistic standpoint, rebuilding units here that cater to students would help encourage more francophones into the city core.
Yeah, they should move all that lazy welfare bums housing to Beaconsfield, in a big 30 story tower immediately north of the Beaurepaire station…
ReplyDeleteI'm not calling anybody a bum, but yeah, I've never really clicked with the concept that the government should be in the apartment-renting business, helping out some random people while other people equally worthy and needy get stuck out on their own....
ReplyDeleteThere's much better and fairer ways to help these people out.
Dozois, not Dozier.
ReplyDeletehttp://www.assnat.qc.ca/en/deputes/dozois-paul-2943/biographie.html
This project replaced some very densely occupied unhealthy prostitute ridden slums. It is hardly a ghetto nor a dense concentration compared to many other cities. The land is only valuable if it is sold to the private sector. Otherwise, it suits its current use just fine. Families who have been living in a neighbourhood for decades shouldn't be evicted because someone thinks they can make a buck by getting rid of them.
The City actually makes money on the project. The corporation which owns it pays the City more in taxes than the City contributes to the corporation.
ReplyDeleteWhere in blazes did this rant come from ?
ReplyDeleteThe Dozois project is the best housing of its type almost anywhere.
This exceptionally well designed residential area is stable and well integrated in the city scape. It has weathered extremely well for its age. It has a larger than normal amount of green and open space and its demolition would be a civic and cultural crime no different than the demolition of the Notre-Dame Basilica, Milton Park, what is left of the historic Square Mile, the Prison des Patriots or the Benny Farm - Oh wait...!
New higher density building can be, and is being built in many other places around the city and the region. The fact that a subway system exists makes any place along the lines eligible for higher density development where an increased tax base can be economically established. Demolishing arguably the most successful low cost housing in the city, if not the country, would prove the collective insanity of Montrealers.
I have been accustomed to better ideas from Coolopolis.
Sign me shocked.
Michael Fish www.michael-fish.ca
I agree with you completely on this Kristian but have been torn into for years whenever I tell friends and lovers that the project is an eyesore. It's all well and good to be in favour of social housing downtown and to evoke France's scary banlieux as a counter-example, but how do we decide the fortunate few who get these posh spots from those who have to live much further away? When the government chooses winners and losers, as with subsidies to businesses, it always does so very clumsily if not via corruption. Further, if the goal is to provide maximum housing, couldn't the city provide housing to more people by providing rent vouchers of a few hundred to a larger number and letting them choose where they want to live. Whatever method we choose, it would be far more efficient for everyone than massive projects like this.
ReplyDeleteIt's very bad idea to "rethink" this part of town all over again. From reading past comments of actual residents, of the Dozois Project, they seem to have fewer complaints about their neighbourhood than we hear from low-income residents living elsewhere.
ReplyDeleteThe notion that the city ought to replace the existing low-rise buildings with high-rise monstrosities is a conceptwhich has failed miserably in the U.S. Witness the Pruitt-Igoe fiasco:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pruitt%E2%80%93Igoe
so let us not fall into the same trap. Politicians always hope that people's memory will be short, butmost of us will not be fooled.
"Developers" are constantly trolling for new districts in which to erect their overpriced condos, so it is no surprise that they have targetted this one so close to downtown.
The existing Dozois structures will no doubt need to be upgraded and modernized on a regular basis over time, but I would suggest that they copy the Benny Farm model in NDG which has evidently succeeded.
It sounds like the only welfare people any of you have ever met were standing at a ribbon-cutting ceremony... In actual fact there are tens of thousands of Montreal welfare recipients who struggle to pay their rent, there will never be enough resources to give them that same sweet 1/4 of your monthly income deal.. so these lucky welfare-lottery winners are trotted out and get their big prize while the others are screwed.. it's not fair for the welfare recipients and you're being very cruel by insisting that this uneven system continue... pull the plug on the current system and redistribute those resources to the poor by helping them pay their rent... Toronto has already opted for this system in a big way... The Habitations Jeanne Mance is the first that should go as the money we're wasting by letting this project stay is way too costly for a city that's hiking its taxes far higher than the rate of inflation every year.
ReplyDeleteThere's a rabid right-wing freak who is impersonating Kristian. Let him out now!
ReplyDeleteSorry anonymous, I think you're the right-wing freak, not me.
ReplyDeleteI've got a lot of personal experience dealing with welfare recipients and their problems with apartments.
To give a tiny elite an almost free apartment and then to say 'screw you' to the rest is what you seem to support.
I think that's reprehensible and insensitive.
I believe in truly redistributing wealth for all the poor, not just a few lucky ones who have the good fortunes to get their lucky free rent.
For serous data on public housing in Montreal:
ReplyDeletehttp://www.omhm.qc.ca/omhm-en-chiffres
(The Jeanne-Mance project is very similar to the larger OMHM - it merely started a bit earlier and has a distinct corporaiton because of somewhat different funding formula.)
I understand that a private sector (for profit) landlord may have problems with welfare-recipient tenants, but that in itself if not a reason to tar all welfare-recipients with the same brush.
Public housing recipients are not a "tiny elite".
Check with the OMHM what their current waiting list is.
It's not the landlords' issues with welfare tenants that I am bemoaning, I was pointing out that welfare recipients have trouble paying their rent and we should help them, rather than subsidize some lucky elite in places like this, which also undermine a potential profitable affair for the city, which is desperately needed as the city is hiking up taxes every year on residents, so please don't call me right wing when you know as well as I know that revenues are constantly needed to keep your holy government-subsidize the poor socialist wheel turning.
ReplyDeleteThe government can subsidize a lot of welfare recipients' rents but instead it chooses to give the entire pot to a few of them, leaving the rest out in the cold.
And yes there's a very long list for public housing but don't kid yourself, almost none of the welfare recipients bother putting themselves on any such list and you know this full well, so I consider your argument malarkey.
I am always leery of "new projects" suddenly appearing out of nowhere and touted by the media--especially when it requires
ReplyDeletedemolishing a previously-existing successful building or housing project which isn't "broken" to begin with.
I smell a rat (too often some non-resident rat) who dreams of big bucks when he knows he can buy something cheap and then jack up the rents. You can be sure that whoever is currently living at Dozois would NOT get first dibs in the replacement housing project, either. They'd quickly find themselves being misdirected and bamboozled with disinformation
while deep-pocketed sharks line up to fill the place. We've been down that path too many times before.
Furthermore, particularly during economic downturns or political uncertainty (and especially in Quebec) a large-scale project will be announced with all of the fancy charts and pseudo-maps but which ends up looking nothing like it. Need I elaborate?
Besides, there still exists plenty of living space on the island of Montreal where new housing can be built. Extend our Metro lines further eastward and the potential tenants will move there.
That is how the London Underground was largely responsible for the
expansion of that city's population movement to the outskirts. Build convenient public transportation and they will come.
Look, they don't have subsidized housing at Peel and Ste.Catherine, do they? No, because it makes no sense to have it on such a valuable piece of property. Well this place is now along those lines. When it was built in the mid-50s, there was no huge library, university, cegep and superhospital within a couple of blocks. Condos here would be snapped up at $350,000 each. Make 2,000 of them and you've got $70,000,0000 in real money that the city could tax the hell out of. Just the welcome taxes alone would be a huge cash cow for the city, with which they could then fund whatever project they want, including rent subsidization for the poor if that's what they want. We all know that such projects as this are a bad idea, they ghettoize the poor in these pockets of shame, subsidized housing should be integrated into neighbourhoods, not in a weird project like this, particularly one that's on such a valuable piece of turf, should be scrapped.
ReplyDeleteLike it or not, Kristian is right. That part of the city is too valuable not to have a development on it.
ReplyDeleteFirst of all: Montreal should do what other cities have done. Instead of giving a subsidized apartment to someone, you let them rent an apartment. The tenet pays their portion of the rent to the government agency that then pays the landlord. They abide by certain regulations and have their salary garnished to ensure compliance. It gives people a place to live that avoids the stigmatization of an urban ghetto while helping landlords find tenants. It works. Follow that.
Second, the city is trying to build an entertainment district to support tourism and culture; however, this area, between the Quartier des Spectacles and St. Denis has never been part of their strategic vision. The land could easily be sold to developers as hotel land, or an annex of the entertainment district. This would develop a large tax base that the city could use to ensure that random budget shortfalls aren't a serious problem. It would give downtown Montreal a comprehensive area to support a wide range of cultural or musical events that will hopefully draw tourists with money.
Montréal's efforts to brand the city as young and vibrant have not been as successful in terms of economic benefits as we'd have hoped. The city needs to use this land to support growth in a sector of the economy that can drive a lot of growth here.
But maybe... instead... we should fight about land use and government housing that rewards the few to the detriment of the many.
We have yet to hear from existing Dozois residents what they think about all of this. Your silence is deafening, people, so please have your say before the bulldozers start smashing your walls down as you sleep!
ReplyDeleteIt must be galling for you to suddenly see "developers" and presumed tax zealots so eager to evict and disperse you into oblivion.
The city of Montreal can and will generate additional tax revenue from other, expanding areas of the island, e.g. the east end, the Blue Bonnets/Hippodrome tract, Griffintown, and so on.
The old Angus Shops district housing development is a great
success and is still expanding, so the notion that a city ought to jam everything into a few blocks which just happen to be next door to the Jazz Festival venue is sheer greed at its worst.
You can rest assured that at some point, our downtown "festival district" will become a victim of its own success with the noise and overcrowding complaints forcing a re-think. Besides, isn't Park Jean Drapeau (the Expo '67 site) more suitable for big crowds?
Remember when everyone was so dead-set on building that baseball stadium just south of the Bell Centre (then called the
Molson Centre)--a plan which thankfully fell through--not withstanding the deviously underhanded machinations of outsiders
determined to steal our Expos away--but if that stadium HAD been built, the traffic congestion around Peel and St. Antoine
would have become unmanageable gridlock.
When the 1976 Olympics were in the planning stage, the public was reassured that the Sherbrooke-Pie-IX-Viau block
would be an easily accessible location--which it indeed was (and still is) with plenty of parking, two Metro stations,
and several bus routes to serve it.
However, as the years went by and the "Big O" fell out of favour, suddenly the entire area was dismissed as being "too far"
and "inconvenient", but the fact that the Impact soccer team built a stadium there clearly shatters such notions.
Thanks for the comments UL, alas it seems we disagree on just about everything. Residents of subsidized apartments get shifted around, that's not a rare event, it happened in Cote des Neiges this summer, they're just happy to keep getting subsidized and why wouldn't they be? But at the very worst if we dare not offend these lucky apartment lottery winners, we can always start by vacating a couple of the buildings through atrophy and eventually setting aside that building and land to a more profitable pursuit. You can call it greed, but it's actually sound financial management, as the city has had to hike taxes way too much over the last few years and some common sense planning would certainly go a long way to alleviating this financial mismanagement. In fact, I've already mentioned this plan to Denis Coderre in a tweet, hopefully he's paying attention.
ReplyDeleteI also disagree about the downtown ballpark. I think it would have been amazing. Sure there would have been 80 afternoon/late evenings with some extra cars on the downtown roads but really so what?
And the Impact has hardly shattered anything. They had to cut ticket prices at least once this season to get butts in seats, in spite of having a surprisingly good on-field product this year.
Michael Fish is right. The plan Dozois is no Pruitt-Igoe.
ReplyDeleteRent subsidization means that public money ends up as profit into private pockets. How can this be acceptable for someone who's supposedly for fiscal conservatism?
And lastly, land is worth what you do with it, not what you COULD do with it.
Um ... sorry Jean. I love Michael Fish but I feel there's a lot of fallacies being tossed around here. Some of the arguments dwell on what the site was 60 years ago, another one he uses in his 1991 article suggests that the area is not very compelling, something that's not true today... and another one mentions that it's the very poorest people in the city living there, which isn't really accurate because
ReplyDeletethere are plenty of poor people in the city and if you concentrate a few thousand all in one place (never a good idea, for a whole bunch of reasons, btw) it will of course create a ghetto of the city's lowest-earners. Time to recoup some of the value that's sitting untapped. The people can still have their subsidized housing, but some distance away. Hardly a painful experience for them.
The folks in these apartments, many senior citizens, disabled and in need of assistance benefit from being centrally located close to many services. It's prime real estate for many reasons and one of them is their proximity to CLSC's, nurses are close by, so are hospitals, shops and other services such as meals on wheels. It is easy to say to get rid of the housing here but it would cause many of the people living there to lose the little bit of quality in their lives.
ReplyDeleteThe city of Montreal has lots more spaces within the downtown area to develop, they've only started now on Griffintown. And lets not forget the Voyageur bus station building waiting to be finished. If there was a serious need for housing of any kind in that area they could have built a 30 storey building there. Which could have been an all in one building, student housing, social housing and affordable housing.