Habitat for headaches

>> Pointe residents livid as do-gooders grab gardens

By RINA CALABRESE

Habitat for Humanity is acting uncharitably, says a group of Pointe St-Charles residents who object to last week's decision by the City of Montreal's executive committee to sell HFH a 16,000-square-foot vacant lot on Sebastopol.

For the last five years, residents of de la Congregation, whose backyards face onto the Sebastopol lot, have cultivated the abandoned piece of soil, planting flower beds of chrysanthemums, rose bushes, sunflowers, hydrangea and zinnias. They have also grown juniper shrubs and maple, fir and pine trees. But the garden, a source of pride for residents, will soon be uprooted thanks to, ironically, our gardening mayor Pierre Bourque.

HFH, an international non-profit Christian organization that aims to eliminate sub-standard housing for the world's poor, plans to build 14 two-storey row houses on the lot. Each house will cost approximately $60,000 to build, with labour, materials and financing offered by private and public donors. To qualify for the four-bedroom homes, a family must earn a combined income of less than $27,000 a year and be willing to contribute 500 hours of "sweat equity." Mortgages are interest-free and cannot exceed 30 per cent of the family's monthly income.

"We don't want that [project] here," says Rosa Savoie, a 24-year resident of de la Congregation, explaining that the plans will not only kill the garden but will also obliterate the neighbours' view of downtown Montreal. "I wanted my husband to plant a big spruce so that at Christmas I could decorate it with lights," she says. "But if they're going to demolish it, we won't bother." Savoie says she and her husband Jacques tried to buy a piece of the land a few years ago, but the city refused to carve it up. "They told us it wasn't for sale."



Fish stunned

Well-known architect Michael Fish says he was "stunned" to hear that the city had sold the vacant lot to HFH. "They gave them my garden, the bastards," says Fish, who owns eight renovated condos next door to the lot. He started the cultivation scheme five years ago to beautify a street often littered with trash.

On Monday, Fish issued a formal objection to Habitat for Humanity, which states: "It does not become any charity, particularly one with the international profile of Habitat for Humanity, to wrest an important community garden from citizens of a fragile neighbourhood that has only begun to benefit from its development." Fish also asks HFH to instead consider developing their project on one of several nearby vacant lots.

"Taking away the garden will screw everybody on the street," says Fish, who believes that subsidized housing has damaged the area by keeping real estate prices down and discouraging development. "This is an entirely misplaced act of charity. They're concentrating poor people in the Pointe and it's counterproductive to the hopes of having the area come alive with shops, like on the Plateau."

But Patrick Braganza, the president of HFH's Quebec branch, has no intention of surrendering the lot. "This is the one the city has offered to us," he says. "It would be silly to look a gift horse in the mouth." The city is selling the lot worth $166,500 to HFH for $6,200.

Martin Wexler of the city's housing department told the Mirror that HFH was favoured because, unlike most other low-cost housing groups, it does not depend on government subsidies. "For us it's very economical because there are no direct costs to us."



Poisoned gift

That sweet deal has left a sour taste not only with the residents of de la Congregation, who say they would have bought the land for that bargain price in order to keep their garden, but also with Le Regroupement information logement de Pointe St-Charles. "We find it deplorable that the city has taken steps with this organization [HFH] without speaking with us," said Marie-Josée Corriveau, the group's coordinator and president of FRAPRU, a powerful lobby group for social housing.

But the lot, which is across from the fenced-off rolling stock of the Alstom yards where locomotives get rebuilt, may turn out to be "a poisoned gift." According to Corriveau, most land near railway tracks in Pointe St-Charles is contaminated and cleaning it could cost up to several hundred thousand dollars. Braganza says he'll have the soil tested; Corriveau says that's a good idea. "Be careful," she warns, "the Pointe is polluted."

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