CKUT attended a community walk led by the Regroupement Information Logement (RIL) to learn about Pointe-Saint-Charles’s history of organizing around housing and the gentrification happening in the borough.

Nicholas Harvest of the RIL says that because the Point has the most social housing per capita in Canada, the neighbourhood has more of a bulwark against rent hikes and housing speculation.

“Us in Pointe-Saint-Charles, we know what the solution to the housing crisis is, and it’s social housing.”

Still, activists say the Point is not immune to the housing crisis hitting Montreal.

Margot Silvestro is a community organizer at the Pointe-Saint-Charles Community Clinic and a co-founder of Bâtiment 7. She’s seen a lot of change in the 17 years she’s lived in the neighbourhood. 

“We see a lot of old people from the Point – former workers, people who were in the Point a long time – and they are pushed out, so they just disappear.”

“Suddenly you have a new family, middle class, with one dog and one kid, and a Tesla.”

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