Congratulations to housing activists from Comité d’action de Parc-Extension in the city of Montréal, Québec, where rapid gentrification and a new campus extension of Université de Montréal are driving up evictions, rental prices and driving down vacancy rates.
The Comité has proposed that the university invest in social housing to help address this local growing housing crisis.
The University’s response? “It’s not our job.”
We beg to differ.
Universities in North America are learning the hard way to curb their arrogance when it comes to student hardship.1
The Université de Montréal’s reaction is perhaps to be expected from ivory towers of academics who imagine that their corner of the education industry pays its debt to society merely by existing.
Affordablehousingaction.org sees no reason why they should not shoulder their share of responsibility in a era of new urban wilderness with scarce housing resources.
Companies locating in today’s contemporary wilderness of scarce resources such as housing may need to — and reasonably be expected to — take on responsibilities of ensuring their employees are sheltered, fed and provided with health care. This responsibility is a simple fact of life for companies that are located in true wilderness — resource extraction industries being a prime example.
More and more, cities are demanding that resident corporations make a fair contribution to a housing problem that their staffing helps to create.2 Lesser institutes of learning in the US are already taking steps to provide affordable housing for their staff,3 if not yet their students.
Is there any reason why a university, which for all its self-importance relies on a population of quite literally starving students for its business success, should not invest more heavily not only in the future, but the here-and-now for its not yet graduates?
Read more about Parc-Extension and its housing activists in The Montreal Gazette: Rent Subsidies And Social Housing Among Solutions Proposed For Parc-Ex
