The first cold spells brought with them a predictable tragedy. On Monday, a seventy-four-year-old man was found unresponsive in the camp where he had taken refuge, in a wooded area of Notre-Dame-de-Grâce, in Montreal. He would have died of cold, for lack of having been able to go to an accommodation resource.
Offering the usual condolences, Valérie Plante said that this tragedy could have been avoided, since there are, it seems, enough places in the refuges to offer accommodation to anyone who deigns to go there. In the same breath, she announced that the Montreal soccer stadium would be used to accommodate up to 300 people infected with the coronavirus, just to relieve the shelters of the metropolis a little.
Just before leaving, the Dr Horacio Arruda even gave accommodation resources a strange blessing, recommending that they open to maximum capacity, regardless of health constraints. We therefore send the message that the next few months are going to be tough, but that everything has been put in place to prevent other lives from being cut down by the claws of winter.
On the phone, Annie Savage, from the Support Network for Single and Homeless People in Montreal (RAPSIM), gets carried away: “It’s not true that we are supposed to make the difference between life and death! Homeless community organizations have their hands full and their hearts heavy. Because, despite what has been suggested, the lessons have not been learned from last winter, nor from any past winter, and the community sector is today immersed in what has everything a real storm.
“Last year, at this time, we were experiencing outbreaks, but the context was different because the state of emergency had been declared in the fall in Montreal. We had access to more resources, much earlier in the season, ”explains Annie Savage. She adds that it is not only the City that has dragged its feet: “We also expected a lot more from the Ministry of Health, especially after the year that had just passed. »
Groups that offer accommodation to homeless people have long complained about the lack of premises, as well as the unstable and insufficient funding for their activities. Unsurprisingly, these problems have only intensified with the pandemic, and material and financial deficiencies have been compounded by an alarming lack of personnel. The groups are operating at reduced numbers due to repeated outbreaks. Many people also threw in the towel out of exhaustion.
In addition, a strange competition for labor has arisen between the public network and the community sector. While the health and social services network also urgently needs reinforcements, we are courting qualified people in the community, to whom we are offering positions that meet equally pressing needs, but for a much better pay. So that there are not many people left to make the places promised in accommodation exist – when we seem to be counting on these places to avoid deaths.
This week, on its Facebook page, the RAPSIM invited homelessness stakeholders to testify to the state of the situation on the ground. Ann-Gaël Barrère-Whiteman, who works at La Rue des femmes and Maison Jacqueline, described the intensification of street violence for the women who live there: “Women [sont] on our doorstep day after day, night after night, exhausted, exhausted, crying, with frostbite and assault wounds, begging us to put them to sleep on the floor for a few hours just to be warm and safe. They are driven out with sticks or feet from building entrances where they try to take refuge; they go around the city by bus, the only way to be seated for a while until they are asked to get off. »
When we talk, Mr.me Barrère-Whiteman explains to me that the situation is unprecedented: never has the urban space been so hostile to people who have nowhere else to go. The imposition of a vaccination passport, for example, complicates access to several interior spaces where it was possible to warm up before. And there is the curfew, again and again, which leads to isolation. Added to this is the effect of the housing crisis, which is pushing a growing number of people into residential instability.
What’s fascinating about this whole story is that the issues described here play out the same way from year to year. Moreover, at this time last year, I wrote an almost identical column to report on the apprehended effects of the curfew in the homelessness community. The worst-case scenarios materialized last year, and nothing has been done in the meantime to rectify the situation. As if, from one year to another, we were surprised that winter returns. Each time, we start from the same point, always encumbering an additional layer of wear.
This is not surprising, since it is easy to forget what is in the margins. However, as with everything else, the pandemic forces us here to face up to everything that has been swept under the carpet for too long. The problem of homelessness has never been dealt with in substance by the institutions that have the power to do so. However, this is a matter of life or death.