Rent rise study maps the households at greatest financial risk in Montreal
“The demand for organizations’ services has surged and the impacts of housing costs are increasingly visible, with families being displaced, individuals pushed to the brink financially and workers unable to find a decent place to live.”
The study forms part of Centraide’s Together for Housing initiative, launched in 2023, and responds to one of the solutions the initiative identified: improving and sharing data to support more effective access to adequate housing for low-income households.
Ten boroughs face the steepest cliff edge
According to RUNWITHIT Synthetics’ projections, a 6% rent increase would drive 10,000 residents across 10 Montréal boroughs into extreme precarity. Those boroughs are Ahuntsic-Cartierville, Côte-des-Neiges–Notre-Dame-de-Grâce, LaSalle, Le Plateau-Mont-Royal, Le Sud-Ouest, Mercier–Hochelaga-Maisonneuve, Montréal-Nord, Rosemont–La Petite-Patrie, Ville-Marie and Villeray–Saint-Michel–Parc-Extension.
The most acute exposure sits in Ville-Marie and Le Plateau-Mont-Royal, where extreme-precarity rates reach 43% and 34% respectively.
The study employs a four-level precarity index — stability, low precarity, high precarity, and extreme precarity — that accounts for both income and essential household expenses such as housing, food, and electricity.
