Winter and its colds have set in. One thousand six hundred and twenty-three places for homeless people are said to be sufficient. However, on the ground, community organizations decry the horror of the situation. There is, in fact, nowhere to direct them due to the lack of accessible and available emergency places. Homeless people are abandoned in the streets.
Accessible figures from the last census in 2018 reported 3,149 homeless people. Since then, everyone agrees that their number has increased drastically. Even based on these old figures which do not represent the reality of 2023, the mathematical demonstration remains eloquent…
How can we be convinced that 1623 places are sufficient when there are 1526 people left outside? In addition, the vast majority of these 1623 places, originally devoted to emergency accommodation, have been converted into transitional accommodation, allowing people to stay there for several months; an essential measure in a process of transition towards stabilization. But as a result, occupying these places for a longer period of time forces people still on the street to stay there longer.
Of this number, there are also places in heat stops, a minimalist version of emergency accommodation, but vital as a last resort; it’s a place on a mattress when you’re lucky, otherwise it’s on a chair; and if the chair is around a table, you are lucky enough to be able to put your head on it.
It remains then, for the 1526 people who did not win the lottery places, to survive the winter in the street, in the metro stations and the waiting rooms of the emergency rooms of hospitals.
But there, it’s stolen time, because we end up dislodging them.
So, where are the places in emergency beds for all the people who are not in transition beds or at heat stops?
The real question
That is the real question. All the different actors in the community and homeless people decry the horror of the situation when winter has set in. I remember the horrible pain I felt when my feet “thawed out” one winter, after playing outside too long; I can’t imagine what they can endure…day after day.
An emergency bed must be dedicated and reserved only for a person in an immediate emergency. And the need is crying out; there is an urgent need for government authorities to take action, by offering an adequate and concrete response. The community sector cannot carry everything. To abandon emergency beds is to abandon the poorest; an attempt to make homelessness uncomfortable even in the absence of a response to basic and vital needs…
Why ? Are they not, they and they, citizens?
Everyone should be able to sleep warm and safe; all while respecting the specific needs and safety of people without imposing gender diversity, especially women.
Homelessness workers are exhausted by the powerlessness of having no answer but to stay outside. Because, believe me, it hurts to tell someone to stay out.
As a cry from the heart, I invite decision-makers, in the ultimate attempt to raise awareness and raise awareness, to come and experience this painful impotence in our resources, to receive requests for a place in emergency beds from one of these 1526 people , with the only answer to offer him to stay outside… again tonight! The community cannot and should not carry everything, and certainly should not be the daily messenger of such a horrible and inhumane response.