The Cloverdale Village housing cooperative in Pierrefonds-Roxboro is a nicer, safer place to live than it was 15 years ago, and borough officials want to keep it that way.
To that end, the Pierrefonds-Roxboro’s borough council passed a resolution last week asking the Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation to continue giving a financial housing subsidy to the social housing cooperative.
“Without the (CMHC) subsidy, the cooperative will be endangered and many families will be at risk of losing their apartments,” said borough mayor Dimitrios (Jim) Beis.
“The end of the subsidy will endanger not only the future of our citizens, but also the borough’s efforts in terms of social development,” added Beis.
About one-third of tenants in the low-income housing cooperative just off Gouin Blvd. at Alexandre St. receive a rental subsidy as a result of an entente between Cloverdale and CMHC, the federal government’s mortgage and housing agency.
The rental subsides to the other two-thirds of tenants in the 766-unit cooperative are not threatened because they come from provincial government social housing programs administered by municipal housing agencies.
That entente between Cloverdale and the CMHC, which this year amounts to $960,000, is scheduled to end in October 2015.
The Gazette requested an interview with a spokesperson from CMHC earlier this week but no one was available.
Daniel Lefebvre, president of Cloverdale’s board of directors, said the loss of the CMHC housing subsidy is a looming issue that he and other Cloverdale administrators have been grappling with for more than a year.
Lefebvre said he and Hélène Ciabu Kalonga, Cloverdale’s director general, have been in contact with several municipal and provincial government officials, including the office of Montreal Mayor Denis Coderre in search of a solution.
But none has yet been found, he said.
He praised the borough resolution for making public the subsidy issue.
Since Cloverdale’s founding in 1988, Lefebvre said, the non-profit housing cooperative has grown to include more than 50 apartment blocks that now house more than 3,000 people.
Four new apartment blocks on Anthony St. that were acquired last year by the cooperative are now being renovated and will mean 112 new units.
The $19-million project is being funded by Quebec’s Société d’habitation (SHQ), a funding body with multiple programs targeting subsidized housing, the city of Montreal and loans procured by Cloverdale and guaranteed by SHQ.
After some difficult years in the 1990s, Lefebvre said, the community made up of three-storey red-, yellow-and white-brick apartment buildings is thriving. It has become a much better place to live than it was in the past.
People are no longer afraid to walk the streets, he said.
Much of the drug and gang crime that plagued the community has been largely routed out, he added.
A Neighbourhood Watch program has been put in place; new basketball courts have been installed.
“People are moving back,” said Lefebvre. “There’s a sense of community. That’s what we want to protect.”
If the rent subsidies disappear, Lefebvre said, he fears many of the old problems that haunted the low-income community will return.
“People will have to do something to pay their rent,” he said, alluding to the drug crime that plagued the cooperative 15 years ago. “We need to find a funding solution or the results could be devastating.”
ccornacchia@montrealgazette.com
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