A new shelter for homeless Indigenous people was to open its doors in the heart of Ville-Marie in time for the winter period, marked this year by an increase in COVID-19 cases among the homeless and strong apprehensions about the number of beds available . However, the project is slow to see the light of day due to binding regulations from the City of Montreal, learned The duty.
Announced at the end of October, the winter homelessness plan, whose entry into force was announced for November 1, provided for the creation of a shelter for homeless Indigenous people that would be open 24/7. days a week during the cold season.
The organization responsible for this initiative, Quebec Native Projects (PAQ), had already found in September the building that was to accommodate this temporary refuge, where homeless people could sleep and eat warm. It would be a downtown hotel located near Place Émilie-Gamelin and the Place Dupuis hotel, in the heart of downtown. The project had received the green light from Public Health in Montreal and the necessary funding, says PAQ Executive Director Heather Johnston.
In order for this project to materialize there, however, the zoning of the building had to be changed to include, among other things, that of rooming house. However, under recent regulatory changes in Ville-Marie, once a building is converted into a rooming house, its vocation remains that way.
” The owner [du bâtiment] could no longer go back and make it into a hotel. He’s never going to accept that, ”sighs M.me Johnston. The refuge project thus finds itself “completely blocked”, explains the director general, who fears being confronted with the same regulatory challenges if she tries her luck elsewhere in the borough.
“We need a political solution because we are currently facing a lack of beds in general for people experiencing homelessness and the Aboriginal community included”, she urges.
Avoid the worst
Mme Johnston also notes that this refuge, open at all times, “is something that would have met the needs” of Elisapie Pootoogook. The 61-year-old woman, from Salluit, a northern village in Nunavik, often traveled to Montreal for health care, told the To have to the executive director of the organization Résilience Montréal, David Chapman, who had known the organization for more than seven years.
During her visits to the metropolis, the lady often found herself in the street or in a metro station. The “fragile” lady was however found lifeless Saturday morning near a residential construction site located at the corner of the intersection of René-Lévesque Boulevard and Atwater Avenue. The City of Montreal Police Department entrusted this file to the coroner. A vigil will also be held next Monday at Cabot Square to pay tribute to Elisapie Pootoogook.
“What’s ironic is that she was sent here for her health. And if she hadn’t been sent here, she would still be alive, ”Mr. Chapman sighs. The latter demands in particular that the tent erected last February in Cabot Square to temporarily provide a little warmth and meals to the many homeless people in the area be transformed into a permanent “building” “with enough places” to meet a demand. which does not run out of steam, summer and winter.
At the office of the mayoress of Montreal, Valérie Plante, we are sure to act proactively “to find available locations” for new emergency shelters in Montreal. Since the lifting of the local state of emergency linked to COVID-19 in the metropolis, last August, the City can no longer requisition hotels for this purpose without first respecting the “regular processes and regulations”, ” which must be respected in due form, ”notes press officer Catherine Cadotte. Patience is therefore essential.
Outbreaks that worry
However, time is running out, hammer home several organizations, at a time when repeated outbreaks of COVID-19 cases have had the effect of limiting the reception capacity of many shelters in recent weeks.
In less than a month and a half, between the 1er October and November 13, 137 cases of COVID-19 were identified in 9 shelters and other resources for homeless people in the metropolis, many of which are still in “active outbreaks”. Of those infected, 119 are homeless and 18 are employees of different shelters. A death related to the disease has also been recorded by the Public Health of Montreal since the beginning of October, indicates the latter in an email sent Tuesday to To have to.
This increase in positive cases thus disrupts the achievement of the target of 1,550 emergency beds that Public Health wants to make available to homeless people in the metropolis, in anticipation of the cold season.
“Fortunately, we haven’t hit very cold periods yet, but I know that there are people who are actually on the streets now. We want to ensure that there are places for everyone, but it is a challenge at the moment, ”confides the president and CEO of the Mission Bon Accueil, Samuel Watts, who also reports a increase in the number of homeless visible in the metropolis. A count carried out in 2018 made it possible to identify 3,149 of them in the streets of Montreal.
“We have to refuse people at the door, but if we are all in an outbreak, where do we refer them?” », Worries the President and CEO of the Old Brewery Mission, James Hugues, in an interview with To have to last Saturday. Chez Doris, the general manager of the Marina Boulos-Winton women’s shelter confides that she already refuses “at least five or six people per day per night” for lack of available places.
The Montreal Public Health for its part reports an average occupancy rate of shelters in the “metropolitan area” of 88%.
“It is not because there would remain three, four or five beds in the west of the island that the person who lives in the southwest will be able to move there”, however illustrates the director of the Network of help for single and homeless people in Montreal, Annie Savage. The needs, she emphasizes, are particularly acute in downtown and in the “southwest of Montreal”.