Quebec mansion images lack context on Kamala Harris teen home

"KAMALA HARRIS - Grew up in Westmount Quebec, as she reports a Middle Class, Working Class Neighborhood," a September 27, 2024 Facebook post says.

The publication includes a collage of photos of Harris and opulent mansions, accompanied by stats about home prices in the Quebec area where the Democratic presidential candidate went to high school.

Numerous other posts shared the same text and images on Facebook, X and Instagram, implying that Harris misrepresented her economic background, including posts in Spanish. The vice president often evokes a middle-class family experience after both her parents came to the United States and started careers as immigrants (archived here).

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Screenshot of Facebook post taken October 22, 2024

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Screenshot of an Instagram post taken October 22, 2024

AFP previously reported Harris's mother Shyamala Gopalan was a medical researcher who took a job at Montreal's Jewish General Hospital and moved with her two daughters to Quebec in 1976 after her divorce of Harris's father Donald Harris.

Harris graduated from Westmount High School, part of the public English-language school system, in 1981 before returning to the United States to attend university.

Westmount, Quebec -- a municipality on the Island of Montreal -- is frequently listed as one of the richest areas in Canada. According to Canadian real estate company Royal LePage, the average home price (archived here) is about Can$2 million ($1.4 million), with some properties selling for more than Can$11 million. This is well above the national average price of Can$669,630 reported by the Canadian Real Estate Association in September 2024 (archived here).

However, Wanda Kagan, a former classmate and longtime friend of Harris, told the New York Times she briefly lived with the future vice president's family in an apartment in a middle-class neighborhood. She described a cohesive home life in a residence on Grosvenor Avenue, telling the Washington Post the Harris family lived on the second floor of a duplex. 

Kagan previously spoke to AFP, but could not be reached for comment on this story. The Harris campaign also declined to comment, pointing to previous reporting.

Photos not of Harris family residence

Using reverse image search, AFP found all the houses included as images in the posts are located in Westmount (archived here, here and here). One of the homes is close to the corner of Grosvenor Avenue but none of the buildings were located on the street where the Harris family reportedly lived.

Christina Miller, a real estate agent based in Westmount (archived here), acknowledged the affluence in the municipality in an October 17 interview with AFP, but said some people live in the area on average salaries.

"It's very easy for somebody to go and take a picture of a very big house in Westmount," she said. "But, I can also tell you as a realtor, I go into a lot of Westmount houses that have not had updates in many, many decades."

The exact address of the family's residence has not been disclosed, but AFP found images of dwellings on the same street using Google Maps.

Westmount income gap

According to 2020 data, Westmount has one of the largest income gaps in Canada, with the highest earning 10 percent of households making nearly 11 times more than the lowest 10 percent.

However, the disparity does not keep the municipality from staying above the Canadian median income of Can$41,200. According to Canadian census data from 2021, the local median income in Westmount was Can$56,600 (archived here and here).

This appears to have also been the case during the Harris family's stint in the area, with the 1981 census reporting a median income for males of Can$28,283 in Westmount compared to Can$14,977 for all of Canada (archived here and here). But female earners in Westmount were making less, with a reported median income of Can$12,012.

Miller pushed back on the idea that a majority of the students attending the public Westmount High School came from the wealthiest families in the area. 

"There are people in and around Kamala Harris's day at Westmount High who were not coming from the same families as people that were being chauffeur-driven around town," she said.

Matthew Shapiro, a current vice principal at Westmount (archived here), said the school had been economically mixed since around the time of Harris's enrolment. Beginning in the 1970s, he explained, many well-off families opted to send their children to private school while more of the Westmount High student body came from neighboring boroughs traditionally thought of as working-class.

He told AFP he understood that Harris grew up in "a nice part of town," but not on the level seen in the photos in the social media posts. 

"There are big mansions, but they're way up on the hill -- certainly not anywhere near where she was coming from," he said in an October 17, 2024 interview. "And none of our students that I know of live in that area."

Read more of AFP's reporting on misinformation around the US election here.