A tent like home

“The day you dismantle my tent, you are going to kill me. »

This is the second winter that Alain Goyette has spent outside.

This year, the sixty-year-old is better equipped. The tall bearded man with hollow cheeks proudly shows us the generator he has just purchased. His neighbor in the camp also benefits, as long as he helps pay for the gas.

Hidden in a snowy grove, at the intersection of avenue Christophe-Colomb and boulevard Crémazie, in the Villeray district, the installation of Alain and his two companions in misfortune does not “disturb anyone”, he says. to be worth.

The trio only has to take a few steps to hold out their empty cardboard cups to the windows of motorists stopped at a red light. This is precisely why Mr. Goyette pitched his tent there. He lives in fear of being chased away at any moment.

Unpublished data compiled by The Press in the 19 boroughs of Montreal allow us to paint a very first portrait of the situation of the camps in the metropolis. Since the start of the year, the City has dismantled at least 460 homeless encampments, including 420 in Ville-Marie. For this district alone, it is four times more than in 2021. “The majority of these operations concern minor camps, from one to five tents,” specifies the district in an email.

The same encampment may have been dismantled more than once.

There are also around twenty dismantlings on the Plateau Mont-Royal and seven in Côte-des-Neiges–Notre-Dame-de-Grâce in 2023. There were three in Mercier–Hochelaga-Maisonneuve and two in Villeray–Saint -Michel–Parc-Extension; but these districts specify that they do not carry out a systematic count. This is therefore partial data. The dozen other dismantlings, when counted, took place almost everywhere in the rest of the island.

Still according to our compilation, in Montreal, more than thirty other camps have been listed without being dismantled by the authorities. This number is greatly underestimated, since the majority of districts do not list the number of camps, often hidden, erected on their territory when they are not dismantled. Those who do it do not all have the same terminology or the same methodology.

Not just downtown

Far from central neighborhoods, districts are noticing the presence of homeless people for the first time.

In Rivière-des-Prairies–Pointe-aux-Trembles, we are talking about a “new phenomenon”. “Five interventions were made in five different locations, to support vulnerable people towards appropriate social resources before dismantling is necessary,” says a spokesperson.

In Saint-Léonard, two “individual” campers were listed in two different parks earlier this year. In Lachine, we observed “individual cases” installed on public property which were “dealt with gradually, in collaboration with community organizations”. Saint-Laurent had the shelter of a person installed on the grounds of a library dismantled.

In Ahuntsic-Cartierville, homeless people have pitched their tents in parks where there had never been one before. Early December, The Press notably observed three tents in Saint-Alphonse Park, in which at least two men lived.

Asked about the phenomenon, the Ahuntsic-Cartierville district – like several others – replied that it does not keep count of the camps. LaSalle, for example, also says it has “no statistics” on the number of camps existing on its territory, specifying that these situations are handled by agents from the local police station. The Montreal City Police Service (SPVM) indicated to The Press do not keep statistics on the subject either.

Incomplete data

“How can we have a concerted game plan if we don’t have an overall picture of the crisis? », asks the spokesperson for the official opposition on homelessness in the City of Montreal, Benoit Langevin. The City moves forward in a “blind, even amnesiac” way, arriving at winter each year and “discovering” that people are sleeping outside, he laments. The opposition proposes to double, from 6 to 12 million, the budget devoted to homelessness.

It is Quebec – through the Ministry of Health and Social Services and its CIUSSS – which has “the capacity” to draw up an overall portrait, affirms the person responsible for social inclusion and homelessness to the committee Executive of the City of Montreal, Josefina Blanco.

The Montreal CIUSSS joined by The Press had no more statistics to offer.

The City “is not in a systematic search for camps; we will act according to the reports,” specifies M^me Blanco, while being “very aware of what is happening on the ground”.

A “collective monitoring of the territory” is carried out in collaboration with the districts and community organizations to “know the needs of people and support them”, assures the municipal elected official.

In Montreal, “it’s tense,” notes professor at the School of Social Work at the University of Montreal Sue-Ann MacDonald. According to her, there are “a lot of inconsistencies” between the public discourse of the authorities and the way the crisis is managed on the ground.

Repeated dismantling only weakens already vulnerable people by forcing them to resettle elsewhere, in more distant, more hidden places, and this will exacerbate their distrust of the authorities, underlines the expert on issues linked to homelessness. .

“Incomprehensibly violent”

In the eyes of municipal authorities, “urban camps are not a sustainable, safe solution, worthy of our rich and united society”.

“We work in collaboration with the health and social services network and organizations on the ground to offer people in the camps support to help resources so that these people are safe, warm and ultimately have a roof over their heads,” explains M^me Blanco, describing the collaboration with the Minister for Social Services, Lionel Carmant, and his teams as “very good”.

The City always opts for a human approach with these people, with intervention time allowing them to relocate and contact aid organizations, adds the elected official responsible for the homelessness issue to the executive committee.

“People are losing property, things that are really important to them in their lives,” in addition to their community that has been created, “it’s incomprehensibly violent,” continues M.^me McDonald. “Putting people out when they’re already out, what’s the point? asks the professor from the University of Montreal. Please other residents of the neighborhood and merchants? »

“At some point, this will have to stop, because these people are caught in a vice, in a vicious circle, and we are not meeting their basic needs,” adds her colleague Caroline Leblanc, candidate for the doctorate in community health at the Faculty of Medicine and Health Sciences of the University of Sherbrooke.

“For all kinds of legitimate reasons”, many do not use emergency shelters, recalls the researcher. However, currently, in the mainland, “we are not even able to provide them with water or sanitation facilities” in the camps. “There is a problem,” insists M^me The White.

Alain Goyette would move tomorrow morning into an HLM if he was offered one.

“My knees are finished. I’m waiting for an operation, but I can’t convalesce here,” he says, nodding towards his tent.

With “my small old age pension, I can’t pay $800 for one and a half”. If Mayor Valérie Plante ever wants to visit him to talk to him, she is welcome. “She comes from Rouyn, and I, from Val-d’Or. There, everyone talks to each other,” he says before returning to begging in urban anonymity, in the shadow of the Métropolitaine.