By announcing the permanent closure of its century-old business on Sainte-Catherine Street East, Groupe Archambault has riveted Quebec’s eyes on a social crisis that residents and regulars of downtown Montreal’s east side know only too well. . It is not surprising that the company invokes the “deterioration of commercial prospects” in the Place Émilie-Gamelin sector to explain the upcoming cessation of activities at Archambault Berri in June. Trade has been established in this sector since 1896, but it is no longer good to live there or trade there.
The craftsmen of Duty can speak with knowledge. The premises of our media are located above the said Archambault, rue Berri, at the corner of Sainte-Catherine. We have witnessed, surprised, worried, concerned but also fearful, the radical deterioration of our neighborhood in recent years. Yes, the urban social fabric has deteriorated there, to the point where this once nerve center of downtown Montreal life is no longer usable, whether it’s night or day. People experiencing homelessness and extreme distress roam there, without access to the essentials: housing, basic resources and psychosocial support.
In this area where construction sites and disused places mix without beauty, there are countless businesses that have ceased their activities. Each abandoned storefront is sadly transformed into a living area for a homeless person. The scenes of daily desolation lead to the conclusion of significant problems of substance use, mental health and violence, all of which sometimes combine into an explosive mixture. The surroundings of certain metro entrances have become open-air drug consumption areas, without adequate surveillance by security forces.
Several reasons have been put forward to explain why we are witnessing this crisis, against a backdrop of a lack of adequate care. The enhancement of certain places, such as the Quartier des Spectacles and Square Viger, where part of the itinerant population wandered, drove these people back to Place Émilie-Gamelin. The shameless decline of private rooming houses, a real lung for people without recourse who need a roof, has accelerated the homelessness of the most vulnerable. The pandemic considerably precipitated this decline, although the decline is not entirely attributable to it. Facing financial or mental health problems, people found themselves on the streets. The homeless population continues to increase in Montreal, and the housing crisis is not unrelated, among other things, to this problem.
All the action plans aimed at finding solutions to the glaring problem of homelessness invariably target the ingredients for the recipe, if not perfect, at least drinkable, of prevention, community consultation, political actions avoiding judicialization and targeting rather psychosocial support, resources in the street to respond to severe substance abuse problems — safe places for supervised injection or even sobering up or detoxification areas — but all point first and foremost to housing. This is where our needs — and our lacks — are greatest.
Interviewed this week on the radio show All one morning, on Radio-Canada, Father Claude Paradis, founder of the organization Notre-Dame-de-la-Rue, which helps homeless people, recounted this heartbreaking exchange he had with a man living on the street for several years: “He said to me: ‘The only roof I will have will be the cover of my tomb.’ For years now, the closure of several private rooming houses has deprived people sentenced to the streets of an essential home for lack of anything better. In buildings housing rooms and common spaces rented at low cost, people could take the first step towards a dignified life: a home. Sadly, Montreal’s aging and difficult-to-maintain building stock has led to closures and the eviction of many lodgers. Cases like the one mentioned this week by THE Montreal Journal, of the Maison Paul-Grégoire, abandoned for three years despite its vocation accepted by the authorities of a home for the homeless, are aberrant. The file seems stuck in an administrative chaos despite the consultation of the authorities involved.
The cold snap that is hitting Quebec has awakened the ardor of the City of Montreal, which has urgently found places to welcome the homeless. These jolts of reactivity only confirm the failure of our social policies in terms of housing and homelessness. There is no need for a steep drop of a few tens of degrees Celsius to conclude that there is an emergency in the east end of downtown Montreal, because it is a real humanitarian crisis that we are witnessing, powerless, every day. Rapid actions aimed at increasing housing and adding resources for psychosocial support and accompaniment of drug addicts must be undertaken. As if it was -40°C every day.