In search of solutions to the homelessness crisis, Montreal Mayor Valérie Plante is calling for more efforts from the health and social services network to help homeless people with mental health problems, “about 300 or 400 people” who are disruptive in public spaces.
“These people sleep in a park or in front of a business entrance. Sometimes, they have a psychosis and end up in the hospital, where they are released after two or three hours. They will go to the soup kitchen, and may cause problems with another episode of psychosis or a drug problem,” the mayor described at the executive committee meeting on Wednesday morning.
“We absolutely must think of these people who are disaffiliated or disorganized, but who need help. We need the health and social services network to go further and to reassure the population, by showing them that we understand their concerns and their feeling of insecurity.”
The erratic behavior of these “mortgaged” individuals scares other citizens. “Before even thinking about housing, we must stabilize these people, who are known to the police and to the ÉMMIS [Équipe mobile de médiation et d’intervention sociale] “, adds M.me Plant: “We don’t want an open-air hospital.”
In all neighborhoods
Mayor Plante welcomed the announcement of a pilot project by the City to house around sixty homeless people in temporary modular buildings, while waiting for them to be able to move into permanent social housing.
PHOTO CHARLES WILLIAM PELLETIER, ARCHIVES SPECIAL COLLABORATION
Valerie Plante
The locations of these future facilities have not yet been determined, but the city’s director general, Benoit Dagenais, has contacted Montreal’s 19 boroughs to help identify land that could be suitable for the project.
The person responsible for homelessness on the executive committee, Robert Beaudry, cited, in an interview with Radio-Canada on Wednesday morning, the Louvain site, in the borough of Ahuntsic-Cartierville, or that of the former racetrack, in Côte-des-Neiges–Notre-Dame-de-Grâce, as examples of municipal land that could potentially accommodate this project.
“We are working with all the districts, because there is homelessness everywhere,” stressed Mr.me Plante. “We want to support people who are homeless and who live all over the territory and who want to stay in their neighbourhood, where they have their habits, their family, their friends. People don’t always know it, but there are already such projects in all neighbourhoods that allow for reintegration and that fit in well with the neighbourhood.”
Waiting for permanent housing
The pilot project includes two sites for these modular buildings, “but I think there will be others eventually,” she said.
However, more funding is needed from Quebec for the construction of permanent social housing. “Because living in an emergency shelter is not a way of life, and neither is living in a tent,” concluded Valérie Plante.
The opposition at city hall, for its part, denounced the fact that the City of Montreal is moving forward with its modular housing pilot project without waiting for the public consultation announced at the beginning of the summer to survey citizens on cohabitation with the homeless.
“The planning of this project seems nebulous, since several questions remain unanswered: where will these modulars be deployed; what will the cohabitation plans be upstream? In short, what is the long-term plan? The installation of modular shelters is not a bad idea, but we need to have an action plan to present before making empty promises,” reacted the opposition spokesperson for the fight against homelessness, Benoit Langevin.