Canada/Bécancour wants to stimulate the construction of affordable housing

With a vacancy rate of just 0.3% and the arrival of workers from the battery industry, the town of Bécancour would like to see more affordable housing built on its territory.

This week, the town launched a project called Accès logement Bécancour, aimed at stimulating the construction of such housing.

To do so, it is joining forces with partners to carry out studies to better understand the needs of tenants, for example, in which sectors affordable housing should be built, and how large and affordable it should be.

Our concern is to create affordable housing, because there's a panoply of projects going on here, but unfortunately not enough affordable housing being integrated into these projects.

A quote from Lucie Allard, Mayor of Bécancour

The fact that housing has become very expensive is a new reality that we didn't know about before," says Mayor Lucie Allard, who explained the need for more data in an interview on the Toujours le matin program.

The city also wants to know how it can adapt its policies to encourage the construction of affordable housing, and how to encourage developers to include it in their projects.

The City of Bécancour's ambition is to see at least two real estate projects with 10% affordable housing included by 2025, the city said in a press release.

Bécancour had a record year for housing creation in 2024, with 253 units created, the mayor points out. The population grew by 12% between 2019 and 2024, according to the city.

With the anticipated growth, the number of additional households could be equivalent in just 3 years to the number of housing units built in the last 20 years, or 2,433 in the short and medium term, the City said in a press release on Tuesday.

Source: ici.radio-canada.ca