Even more Quebecers are looking for housing than during the same period last year, according to the Front d’action populaire en réaménagement urbain (FRAPRU).
The organization’s spokesperson, Véronique Laflamme, noted that 2,039 tenants are currently receiving active assistance across the province to find housing, citing data from the Société d’habitation du Québec (SHQ), during a press conference in Montreal on Friday.
This number is higher than the 1,899 households assisted last year, which was itself an increase from 1,698 in 2024.
“It speaks volumes about the depth of the crisis we’re facing,” she laments.
However, the SHQ clarified in an email that “these requests for assistance are not necessarily related to households at risk of becoming homeless.” “In some cases, they are simply requests for information.”
For her part, Laflamme believes these figures represent only the tip of the iceberg. Not all tenants looking for housing have necessarily applied for assistance.
“Nor do these figures include tenant households that, out of desperation, have signed a lease in recent weeks for housing that is too expensive or too small for their family—tenants who are living in substandard housing or in overcrowded conditions because they cannot find anything better.”
Looking to the City of Montreal, 278 households are still trying to secure a place to stay after Moving Day, a small decrease from the same time last year when 287 households were still looking for housing.
The vacancy rate in the city has increased in the past year, from 2.1 per cent in 2024 to 2.9 per cent in 2025, according to data from the Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation (CMHC). Coordinator for FRAPRU Catherine Lussier believes this increase is due to new units being too expensive for most tenants.
“It’s clear for Montreal that, even though the vacancy rate has increased, there is really a lack of affordability in Montreal,” she said.
Lukas Jasmin-Tucci, a CMHC economist, notes that the demand for affordable housing units remains high despite the vacancy rate increasing.
“If we look at the lower end of the market where the rents are a bit lower, this is where the demand is stronger. So we will still, even though there’s an average increase of the vacancy rate, we’ll still get a lot of pressure on those units that are more affordable.”
Wages not keeping pace with rent
FRAPRU believes that rising rent costs account for the increase in the number of Quebecers facing housing insecurity.
In Quebec, the average rent for a two-bedroom apartment—commonly referred to as a “four-and-a-half”—was $1,272 in October 2025, according to CMHC data.
That same rent was $815 in October 2019, before the pandemic began, representing a 56 per cent increase.
The average hourly wage rose by only 32 per cent over the same period, according to data from the Institut de la statistique du Québec. “We’re concerned about the growing poverty among tenants as a whole,” says Laflamme.
“We’re normalizing the fact that people are ultimately spending too large a portion of their income on housing,” she adds. “People have less and less money for groceries and transportation.”
She finds it “striking” that housing starts are on the rise. In her view, this suggests that new housing built in the private sector is failing to meet the needs of the less affluent.
Montrealer Dany Levesque notes that the rising costs have been particularly hard on senior citizens. “It’s unaffordable for the elderly. There are many older people, and young people today, who are forced to put twelve people in one dwelling.”
Noee Sourang, who moved to Montreal from France almost a decade ago, says that she has also noticed the costs skyrocket recently.
“It’s been eight years that I’m living here. When I arrived, it was pretty much affordable, and we see the price getting crazy and crazy year after year.”
Martin Messier, the president of the Quebec Landlords Association, says that he doesn’t anticipate rent prices coming down due to rent fixing regulations put in place by the Tribunal administratif du logement in the province.
“In Quebec, we see the prices being kept stable because we’re not able to get back to the initial point,” he explained. “So let’s say that in a different market where we don’t have rent control, we could lower the rent and get back to the initial rent in a few years. If we renounce a portion of the rent, we’re stuck with that price reduction for a long time, forever basically.”
FRAPRU is using the upcoming election campaign to urge the major parties to commit to investing more in public housing.
“We ask at least 10,000 units a year for at least 15 years if we want to make an impact on the market,” said Lussier. “And for that, we consider that we need programs, like public programs that are well financed and complete for supporting the development of social housing.”
An issue across Quebec
This situation is not limited to the Island of Montreal and Quebec’s major municipalities. “This isn’t something we saw in the 2000s or 2010s,” says the FRAPRU spokesperson. “When there were major periods of rental housing shortages in Quebec, they were concentrated more in the big cities.”
Montérégie is the region with the highest number of support cases this year, at 411, followed by Capitale-Nationale with 299. The number of support cases in these two regions has risen sharply.
The situation is relatively stable in Montreal, with 278 cases of assistance.
“If we compare these figures to the number of tenants in a given region, we also see that the situation remains just as concerning in the Bas-Saint-Laurent, Saguenay-Lac-Saint-Jean, the Laurentians, and Lanaudière,” she explains.
“There are no regions where tenants looking for housing do not face challenges,” she insists.
–With files from Gareth MadocJones and Genevieve Sylvestre
–This report by La Presse Canadienne was translated by CityNews
Véronique Laflamme, spokesperson for Front d’action populaire en réaménagement urbain (FRAPRU), talks to reporters in Montreal about the housing situation in Quebec after moving day, on July 3, 2026 (Gareth Madoc-Jones, CityNews)
Keep it Factual
Add CityNews Montreal as a trusted source on Google to see more local stories from us.
