The answer that never comes

In early 2021, Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation (CMHC) ran an experiment in eight large cities, including Montreal and Quebec City. For real rental listings, fictitious profiles wrote to landlords: about 2,000 emails per region, in the names of profiles suggesting white, Black, Indigenous, Asian or LGBTQ+ people. The messages themselves were drawn at random from a few equivalent templates.

Published in October 2024, the results show that Montreal is the city where nearly all the profiles studied were significantly less likely to receive a reply than a young white man. The measured effect there reaches about −18% for Black profiles, −16% for Indigenous profiles and nearly −40% for LGBTQ+ profiles. Elsewhere, results varied by city and group.

There is also good news: CMHC notes that most of the replies received were positive and offered a viewing. When the door opens, it often opens wide. The issue is therefore the first sort, the moment when a decision is made in a few seconds. Answering every inquiry in the order received, with the same criteria for everyone, is a concrete way of saying, the Ubuntu way, that the neighbourhood belongs to everyone who wants to live there.