Several shelters for people experiencing homelessness expect to be at maximum capacity this weekend, despite the construction in the last few days of a new emergency shelter in a soccer center in the borough of Villeray–Saint-Michel–Parc-Extension.
The building on avenue Papineau, where 350 Red Cross beds were installed in fourth gear earlier this week, opened its doors on Thursday. The same evening, he welcomed 200 homeless people with COVID-19 to his lair, at a time when positive cases for the disease are on the rise among the homeless in the metropolis.
“Everyone was transported the same day to the stadium,” said the Duty Saturday the President and CEO of the Old Brewery Mission, the organization mandated to manage the site, James Hughes, who finds “really impressive” the speed with which this site has been made operational.
However, this shelter is only for homeless people who have contracted COVID-19 and therefore does not meet all needs, said Mr. Hughes. “The stadium is a red zone and as far as green zones are concerned, there are certainly very significant challenges”, he illustrates in reference to traditional refuges and emergency resources. dedicated to homeless people who do not have COVID-19. These places, taken together, offer about 200 places less than what was planned in the previous winter roaming plan last year, analyzes Mr. Hughes.
“The government has not funded the same volume of capacity as last year and with the cold, with the pandemic, not having the additional capacity, that creates the issues we are currently facing,” laments James Hughes.
The Patricia Mackenzie Pavilion, the shelter for homeless women at the Old Brewery Mission, is also “completely full” and has even had to refuse a few people in the last few days, for lack of places in sufficient quantity, he indicates. , when the province is hit by a new wave of extreme cold.
Lack of manpower
On January 10, in one of his last gestures as Quebec’s national director of public health, Dr.r Horacio Arruda has allowed shelters for people experiencing homelessness to return to their original capacity, before the pandemic, during periods of extreme cold. All so that these resources can then accommodate as many people in need as possible.
However, the lack of manpower in several resources complicates the situation. “Our day shelter has been closed on weekends since January 2 for lack of staff,” said the general manager of Chez Doris, Marina Boulos-Winton, who lists nine employees in her charge who were recently infected with COVID. -19.
“I really have a shortage of staff and not everyone can return to work after five days [d’isolement]“, adds M.me Boulos-Winton, which also manages an emergency shelter set up in the context of the pandemic in a 41-room downtown hotel. “We are full,” she says about this resource, which has had to refuse an average of four women a day since the beginning of the month and up to 11 women on the evening of January 8.
“We are still at the limit of our capacities, but I remain optimistic”, notes for his part the president and general manager of the Mission Bon Accueil, Sam Watts. The organization accommodated a total of 295 people on Friday evening, which is at the limit of its capacity, except for a few places. He didn’t need to refuse anyone at the door that night, however.
“That does not mean that we are going to be well during the coming week”, nuance Mr. Watts, who recalls that the needs of the homeless in the metropolis are particularly unpredictable this year, given the health crisis.