The scene is daily. Rue Sainte-Catherine, on the side of rue Saint-Hubert and Place Dupuis, looks abandoned. The storefronts of certain businesses on Montreal’s thoroughfare are boarded up with wooden planks. Men, toques pulled down over their heads, drink a can of beer in the discreet lair of the entrance to a closed building. Other clusters of homeless people are on the sidewalk and rub shoulders with employees on break who smoke a cigarette and people who circulate in a hurry.
Yousef and Spenser, two greeters from the Village’s Business Development Corporation (SDC), are greeted with glee and thumps on the fist as they approach. “At the beginning, they were very suspicious, they wondered if we were with the police”, slips Yousef. The bond of trust was built little by little, and the young man takes very particular care that he is not attached to the label of snitch. The agents check on each person and continue on their way. One of the women, with a stoned and lost gaze, worries them.
A little further on, in front of the Berri-UQAM metro station, the two agents gave information about a housing resource to a woman in her fifties in a wheelchair who was looking for a roof. They are happy to see her: it had been several months since they had seen her, because she was hospitalized.
Spenser, a vivacious 22-year-old who was a security guard until recently, says he gets a lot of calls from shopkeepers, especially if someone is sleeping on the grounds of a shop or using drugs in front of a patio. good weather has come. Some cooperate, some don’t. “We are a buffer between the police and the homeless, he illustrates. Sometimes they are more cooperative with us, as they know us. »
They are six reception agents to walk the streets during the day and evening. It was the temporary conversion of the Hôtel Dupuis into a shelter during the pandemic that forced the establishment of this pilot project in January 2021. The project, at a cost of nearly $215,000, will be renewed until next December and depends on a contribution of $150,000 from the Ville-Marie borough.
“The activities revolve a lot around the transmission of information and raising awareness,” explains Sophie Auger, the coordinator of reception agents at the SDC. The approach is to defuse and try to avoid escalations. Situations have been undone before things went wrong. »
“It has reduced the number of calls to 911,” adds Gabrielle Rondy, acting director general of the SDC du Village.
A forum on the future of the Village
The pandemic has dealt a severe blow to the Village, with the confinements which have been chained for two years and which have had an impact on the frequentation of several businesses, in particular bars, karaokes and restaurants. In a survey that the SDC recently carried out among merchants, roaming is the issue that concerns the most 76% of respondents. Then come crime and the image of the Village.
Now is the time for recovery, optimism and revitalization, with the hope of seeing foreign tourists return to Montreal and of having a more sustained resumption of activities following the Omicron wave of this winter. .
“We are going to put the package”, launches Gabrielle Rondy. “There are no commercial activities close to Place Dupuis, she illustrates. We want to make an urban vegetable garden in mediation and social cohabitation to animate this sector. She hopes to make the Village a successful example of “positive cohabitation” rather than driving out certain groups of people.
For its part, the Ville-Marie borough is counting on a few immediate actions and on a Forum on the future of the Village which will be held this summer, which is intended to be inclusive and will take the form of consultations open to all. It will revolve around three major axes: economic development, social development and the redevelopment of rue Sainte-Catherine.
“We want to know what actions to take so that the Village does not decline and that we emerge stronger from the pandemic, underlines Robert Beaudry, municipal councilor for the district of Saint-Jacques for Projet Montréal. The Village is not dead at all, but it has certainly been very affected. “There are still vacant premises, and this is a neighborhood that has been particularly affected over the past two years when compared to others, he said.
“In the measures that have been put in place, we want to see what were the vectors of success, who can carry them and how to put them forward, he adds. We want the future development of Sainte-Catherine to promote commercial development, but also social cohabitation, without a gentrification effect. He cites the Jardins Gamelin at Place Émilie-Gamelin as an example, where he believes a balance is being struck between marginalized populations, families and visitors.
Thorny cohabitation
This famous cohabitation is not always easy to achieve with the colorful population that frequents the Village. The gap is sometimes very wide between residents, traders and marginalized populations, some wishing that others would disappear from view.
On Sainte-Catherine Street, near Papineau, two young women in their early twenties shouted enthusiastically in the direction of Spenser and Yousef. They cross the street at a run to join them. With disconcerting rapidity, one recounts being on sick leave after having recently swallowed a bottle of “her pills”, because she was in “debuzz with crystal meth” and wanted to sleep. The other was recently incarcerated because of an altercation with the police.
During the discussion, they taunt a passing police car. When The duty explains to them the subject of the report and asks them what they think of the issues of cohabitation in the Village, one considers that “people lack open-mindedness”. “I’ve been on the streets before, and people are really judgmental. Not everyone, I don’t want to generalize, but several, adds her friend. You are in the street, and some tell you “go home to sleep”. But I don’t have a house. The two young women are also worried about stories of people who have been stabbed in the area.
We want the future development of Sainte-Catherine to promote commercial development, but also social cohabitation, without a gentrification effect.
The Centre-Sud Community Development Corporation (CDC), which will take part in the Forum set up by the borough, hopes that redevelopment and revitalization will not be synonymous with crowding people out. “They are human beings. They have a network in the Village and resources. This is the place where they live, launches Laurie Pabion, acting director at the CDC. If we squeeze them, they’ll go further east, and it’ll never end. This logic is endless. »
And how to achieve a certain harmony? “These are people who don’t talk to each other and who are full of prejudices. And it goes in all directions, itinerant people like those who have a home or a business, she thinks. But do these different populations have real opportunities to talk to each other? And talk to each other differently than they usually do? »