City Council: Housing shortage as focus of Council meetings

The Maritime Community intends to allow the construction of buildings with more than four units on the archipelago.

A draft bylaw was tabled Tuesday night at a council meeting to add multi-family use to the rural allocation of the territory, which applies to land zoned residential, except for urban perimeters and village cores.

Acting Mayor Gaétan Richard confirmed that developers have approached the municipal government with multi-family initiatives, but were limited to four units per lot.

If passed, the bylaw will ensure that housing projects of five units or more will be subject to approval by elected officials as well as the public, he says.

Future construction will have to be connected to a municipal water and sewer system.

Council has also formalized its intention to exercise its right of first refusal to purchase private property that is for sale, a power recently granted to all cities and municipalities in Quebec.

« The mechanism can be used in various ways, but always in the interest of the public good, for example for park development or real estate development, » said Gaétan Richard.

An inventory of interesting properties will first be drawn up, he says.

The Municipality of the Magdalen Islands has also resolved to request government intervention from insurers to safeguard Quebec’s real estate heritage.

The body wants to call on the federal and provincial governments to find solutions to guarantee the insurability at reasonable cost of all heritage buildings, regardless of their age, location and protection status.

At the end of the meeting, the elected officials acknowledged the end of Mr. Richard’s mandate as interim mayor and praised his work.