Home-ownership is a source of security, sense of belonging and saving accumulation. In the City of Montreal only a quarter of the population own their homes. Despite the fact that the majority of renters wish to become owners, only a small fraction can afford new products of the home-building industry. In this thesis the author proposes to the industry a strategy for cost reduction: uncompleted condominiums, that are the least finished dwelling units legally allowed for living. The proposed design is analyzed from the legal, social, technical and economic points of view. The research is founded on a review of the literature, a market survey and three simulations. It was found that the proposed product might be 26-29% less expensive, than investigated examples, and could be appreciated by childless households.

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It is believed that by knowing user characteristics during the pre-design stage, the architect can better satisfy the economic requirements and spatial preferences of the user. The author's goal in this study is to demonstrate the validity of four variables in providing information about prospective home buyers in a particular site in order to define their housing needs during the programming stage. / Past studies suggested four variables from which basic design guidelines could eventually be extracted: socio-demographic characteristics, type of household/life cycle stage, economic characteristics and mobility. The validity of these variables were tested by the author in four case studies which included several low-cost housing projects in metropolitan Montreal. Information from indirect sources (i.e. literature survey and evaluation of existing projects), was compared to direct sources (i.e. target projects in which the information was readily available). The results established the relevance of some of the variables, and indicated that reliable information could be obtained by architects and housing researchers from indirect sources, thereby, optimizing time and resources.

This study examined the relationship between residential environment and subjective quality of life (QOL) for individuals with mental illness. Demographic variables impacting QOL were also examined. The Wisconsin Quality of Life Index---Canadian Version (CaW QLI, Diaz & Mercier, 1996) was administered to a total of 46 participants and was used to assess the QOL of individuals living in a supported residential environment as compared to individuals living in other types of environments. / The major findings were: (1) psychiatric consumers/survivors in the supported residential environment reported higher QOL scores in 4 of the 9 domains examined; (2) residents living in a supported housing facility were more likely to be involved in a greater number of daily activities; (3) education was strongly correlated with 4 of the 9 QOL domains; (4) regression analyses however showed that residential environment or demographic variables on their own did not have a significant effect on QOL. Further research is required to delineate the relationships between residential environment, demographic variables and QOL.

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Montreal serves as an illustration of how loft landscapes outside of Manhattan draw from the landscape discourse of SoHo, but are inscribed with local economic, political and cultural attributes. Two aspects of the reconstruction of loft landscapes are highlighted: the imagery of the loft in the mass media and the role of local residents in interpreting and reconstructing the loft concept in the Montreal rental market. A description of the local impact of economic restructuring on the built environment of the inner city sets the stage for an examination of two groups of residents. The industrial built environment in Montreal suffers from disinvestment and lack of regulation making the rental sector loft a readily available housing choice in the inner city. Undefined and outside of municipal regulations, lofts are domestic spaces in which tenants can construct identities. Artists, who use industrial spaces to combine home and work (Loft Artists) and non-artists, who use appropriate industrial spaces as rental housing (Loft Dwellers) are the two primary groups to occupy these spaces. A comparison between these two groups, their use of space and their identification with the loft concept, makes up the empirical component of the research. (Abstract shortened by UMI.)

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