With Montreal renters getting squeezed, should the city take a cue from Berlin?
CBC
Standing at the top of Mount Royal, the possibilities for a place to live appear to be ever expanding.
Cranes dot the skyline, and new glass condominium towers reach into the clouds. But this development boom remains out of reach for many residents.
Even as new properties become available, the latest housing figures show low-income residents and families are increasingly being driven away from the city centre.
Montreal has seen an influx of capital into the real estate market, gobbling up the last parcels of land for development. Big firms have also increasingly taken ownership of rental properties.
Among the largest is Akelius, a Stockholm-based company, which owns 60 buildings in Montreal for a total of 3,527 units.
It was one of the companies targeted in a referendum last month in Berlin aimed at curtailing the sway of big firms over the rental market, which has spiked in recent years.
Residents of the German capital voted in favour of expropriating more than 200,000 housing units from the city's largest landlords and transferring them to public ownership.