Montreal Mayor Soraya Martinez Ferrada is defending the city’s decision to abandon a long-planned modular housing project for unhoused people in Outremont.
Speaking at city hall Thursday, Martinez Ferrada said the costs attached to the project have grown too high to justify — despite the city already purchasing the units under the previous administration.
“It was not the right project for that site,” Martinez Ferrada told reporters. “We need to have the right project, on the right site, with a financial structure that works.”
The previous Projet Montréal administration had purchased modular housing units for $3.2 million in early 2025. The plan was to open three separate sites across the city that could each house 30 people experiencing homelessness.
The first opened last September at the former Hippodrome site in Côte-des-Neiges—Notre-Dame-de-Grâce, and the second opened in Ahuntsic-Cartierville in February.
The Outremont project was scheduled to open this year, but the Journal de Montréal reported this week the city has decided not to move ahead with it.
Martinez Ferrada said Thursday the previous administration failed to account for the cost of decontaminating the site, which drove the price beyond what’s acceptable.
“Modular housing should cost less than $100,000 per door. The project we had in our hands, because we need to decontaminate the site … would cost more than $300,000 per door,” the mayor said. “That’s not modular housing anymore.”
The trailer-like units used for the projects are modular homes that once sheltered Hydro-Québec employees working on the Romaine dam. It’s unclear what the city now intends to do with those that were bought for the Outremont site.
Martinez Ferrada raised the possibility of using them in a different capacity, noting a homeless resource offers services from a similar unit at the Notre-Dame St. encampment.
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As for the Outremont site itself, the mayor said the city is already planning a separate project that would include affordable and social housing. While the project would still require decontaminating the land, she added, “it will give us much more long-term, permanent housing.”
The modular housing projects had been positioned by the previous administration as an innovative solution to countering the homelessness and housing crises.
During the municipal election campaign that led to her election last November, Martinez Ferrada argued the units aren’t a dignified option for people experiencing homelessness.
Though she had softened her tone in recent months, she still maintained Montreal needed to look into how cities such as Gatineau and Halifax managed to launch similar projects at much lower costs.
Asked if she’s concerned about the message abandoning the project sends — especially from an administration that has made homelessness its top priority — Martinez Ferrada said she stands by the decision.
“I think I’ve made our priority very clear,” she said. “I want to do homelessness projects that are the right ones, with a cost that we can pay.”