What happened? The short answer, as Safdie would later concede, is that the technology of the times was not yet in sync with his ambitious architectural approach. The long answer is more complicated, and in the end has much more to do with expectations than with architecture.
After Expo, Habitat stood empty for over a year. Flailing around to pay off the construction bill, the Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation first set the rents at astronomical rates: over $1,000 for some units, at a time when a pleasant two-bedroom townhouse could be had for a couple of hundred dollars a month. Making matters worse, cmhc was simply a lousy marketer. It eventually slashed the rents to $400 per unit, still high for the times. It was a money-loser for the government, and restricted to high earners.
Fast-forward four decades: these days, Habitat is one of the most coveted addresses in Montreal. To buy a 1,200-square-foot two-bedroom unit will set you back around $500,000 — about double the price of a townhouse in central Montreal. Maintenance fees alone (which include a shuttle bus to ferry residents to the city) run around $1,200 to $1,500 per two-cube unit per month. To Safdie, Habitat’s exclusivity means not failure but success. “That shows it’s desirable,” he says. “To me, the gentrification of Habitat is the best thing that could have happened.”
Habitat is now infused with the city’s cultural elite: the top dogs in Quebec film, photography, and media. But more and more, it draws Montreal’s political elite, especially Liberal power brokers. The first was long-time resident Rae, not only a vice-president at Power Corp., but also brother of would-be federal Liberal leader Bob, and the rainmaker for all three of Jean Chrétien’s electoral victories. Rae, who heads the Habitat partners committee, is a member of what many locals refer to as the Old Gang — those who have been living at Habitat since before Ottawa threw in the towel and sold it off to the private sector in 1986. And when that sale took place, Rae and fellow Habitonian Frank Motter were ready to make the best of it.
When Ottawa put Habitat on the block in 1985, a tenants’ collective put in a bid of $9 million. It was swiftly trumped by Gatineau businessman Pierre Heafey, who offered the feds $10 million. Ottawa took it; then, in one deft move, Heafey flipped it back to the tenants for $11.4 million just three weeks later. Right after that, Rae and Motter teamed up with Heafey to snap up the units of those tenants who had declined to buy. These, in turn, they gradually sold to existing tenants. It was a shrewd, perfectly legal way to make a killing in real estate. But to many of the other tenants, it was a violation of what they had tacitly assumed was Habitat’s one-big-family, non-profit roots. “Rae runs Habitat like it’s Power Corporation,” wails Old Gang resident Lucette Lupin. “But it’s a community!”
Given the units’ rising prices, none of the long-time residents should have reason to weep. But that does suggest that Habitat as a great social experiment — community building through architecture — can go only so far in a market economy. “We don’t have the sense of community that we used to,” says another Old Gang denizen. To prove her point, she shows me a clipping regarding Jean Carle, from the Gomery sponsorship scandal inquiry, who recently moved into Habitat. (Gomery: “If this were a drug deal, it would be called money laundering!” Carle: “You’re not wrong.”) “See the kind of people that are moving in here now?” she says with a sigh.
John Rae’s 3,600-square-foot domain is a fusion of two separate units, and a jumble of decor themes. Walls are sheathed in patterned fabric. The tiny space age kitchen has vanished, replaced by a capacious piazza of granite and stainless steel. Other rooms are painted in emphatic hues of green and yellow ochre, and filled with ornate furniture. It’s a long way from Safdie’s original idea — actually, it’s pretty much a run-of-the-mill luxury condo — but so be it. “There’s a lot of romance about the original units,” acknowledges Rae. Sweeping one hand toward the huge, sumptuous new kitchen, he adds, “This reality is better than that romance.”
Rae is expounding from his favourite room, a former concrete balcony now paved with grey travertine and converted into a closed solarium that he calls “my oasis.” Other than the frequent phone calls that punctuate our conversation, the atmosphere is utterly serene. He steps up to one of Habitat’s signature windows, a long vertical strip like the window of a fortress. Beyond the geometric concrete are the whirling rapids — an eddy in the St. Lawrence River — where a gaggle of surfers have been hot-dogging and wiping out. Rae shakes his head slowly: “I never understood the business of surfing.”
Daring? Risk-taking? I suggest.
“Daring,” nods Rae. “Okay, now I get it.” And then he glides to the next room to take yet another call.
