Wild camping | The Press

I hadn’t visited Jeanne-Mance Park for a few weeks and what I saw there on Tuesday blew me away.

It was beautiful and lively, as always. Volleyball players in action on the sandy courts, students picnicking, dogs walking with their owners, and Mount Royal at its most verdant: Montreal at its best.

But it was also heartbreaking. In the midst of all this life, a dozen or so homeless people had pitched their tents, spread out over a hundred yards. Some were smoking crack, others were trying to sleep as best they could in the blazing midday sun.

Nothing to discourage people from visiting the park, but nothing to cheer about either, quite the contrary.

A few days earlier, I saw similar makeshift installations near Notre-Dame Street East, in Hochelaga-Maisonneuve.

Again: not a megacamp, like the one that was dismantled in 2020. But the tents, quite spaced out, still numbered in the dozens.

Scenes of this type are multiplying in Verdun, in Rosemont, in Ahuntsic, along the Lachine Canal… Wild camping, often solo, or in small groups, in the heart of the city.

A practice officially banned by the authorities, but which seems to be increasingly tolerated.

Montreal is about to offer some alternatives to encampments.

She is not the only one.

Across North America in recent months, cities have announced or implemented measures to better support urban campers. To offer them a little more dignity, and to try to limit friction with their neighbors.

These steps are pragmatic, for two reasons: there are not enough places in emergency shelters to accommodate all the homeless, and real housing is sorely lacking.

Bottom line: no matter how much we tell campers to leave, they often have nowhere else to go. Sad, but true.

We are therefore witnessing these days a multiplication of “provisional” measures (a word with an elastic definition) to try to manage the camps a little better.

I note two broad categories: the designation of “authorized” sites for camping, and the construction of tiny houses or modular dwellings.

Halifax, Nova Scotia, is one of the Canadian cities where this has been done the furthest. More than 1,300 people are homeless in the municipality of 430,000 – a huge ratio.

The city council has already identified half a dozen sites, mostly parks, where encampments of four to 12 tents are permitted. Nine other sites are being considered for tents.

Although it maintains that this is a “temporary” solution, the city has nevertheless issued specific criteria for choosing sites. They must be located at a minimum distance of 50 metres from schools, daycares and other sensitive facilities.

They must also provide toilets and sources of drinking water, otherwise these services will be provided by the municipality. The issue of cohabitation with other users – for example, people who frequent these parks – is also taken into account.

In short, it is about providing basic amenities to the occupants of these camps, while generating as little nuisance as possible for local residents.

A last resort all along the line: Halifax is looking to find “the best of the worst options” in a context of acute crisis, one municipal administration official summarized to CBC.

At the same time, it should be recalled that the financing and construction of social housing is the responsibility of higher levels of government. This is true in Nova Scotia as in Quebec…

Halifax has also built modular housing, which resembles construction trailers. Since 2022, they have been housing around sixty homeless people on two separate sites.

This is the other major trend in the fight against homelessness. Several other cities have followed suit in recent months.

Gatineau is currently building a modular “village” for the homeless. Quebec announced its own tiny-house project last June. And the metropolis will soon be moving in this direction, my colleague Isabelle Ducas reveals today.

The City of Montreal will first try the experiment with a first tranche of 60 modular housing units, spread across two sites. They will be equipped with showers, toilets and other common areas. A transitional living environment between the street and possible social housing.

Who will pay for these homes? Where will they be located? Not yet clear.

Intense debates are expected in the neighborhoods where they will be located. The shoddy planning of some homeless resources has exacerbated mistrust among many people. The choice of sites will be scrutinized.

The issue of “traditional” tent camps will also have to be settled once and for all in Montreal. Will they continue to be tolerated or not? Will basic services be offered in certain designated sites, such as in Halifax? Will there finally be a specific policy?

Answers coming soon, I am told.

However, an increasingly clear observation seems to be emerging, in Montreal as elsewhere in the country. As noted by federal housing advocate Marie-Josée Houle in a scathing report published in February 2024, the systematic dismantling of encampments does nothing to resolve the situation of people on the streets.

The homeless do not disappear into thin air, and housing adapted to their condition does not materialize by magic. This is the reality in the short, medium and, probably, long term.