The Union of Quebec Municipalities summit on homelessness takes place at a time when the needs have never seemed so dire. The number of people on the streets has jumped by 44% in just five years, according to the results of the census released on Wednesday, and particularly in the regions, where makeshift camps are appearing near city centers.
The community sector is hoping for a serious boost to weather this storm, “perfect” to the point where even workers are stranded, today, in Quebec, on the sidewalk, due to lack of housing.
In Rimouski, this summer, around ten tents sprung up in the Parc de la Gare, a symptom of an increasingly visible distress in Bas-Saint-Laurent.
“The face of homelessness is changing,” explains Martin Bélanger, general director of Répit du Passant, a house that provides shelter to homeless people in Rimouski. This summer we had two workers — workers! — who slept in the park. The vacancy rate is 0.2%: they were not able to find housing. »
The needs are growing, but the means remain slim. Martin Bélanger says he came close to closing his resource for “a month or two” in the spring to offer rest to his tired staff. Recruitment, he adds, is proving to be an increasingly obvious challenge: The passer-by’s respite, open 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, needs staff that the community sector, with its salaries unable to compete with those in the private and public sectors, struggles to attract.
Insufficient help
On the eve of the summit on homelessness, the Quebec government announces the granting of an additional $15.5 million which will be used to finance shelters in preparation for cold weather. The most recent count shows a little more than 10,000 homeless people in Quebec: the emergency aid granted, which is added to the $280 million released as part of a five-year plan, therefore represents , on average, 1550 dollars per person.
A sum that is clearly insufficient given the scale of the needs, according to several municipal officials. In Montreal, Mayor Valérie Plante stifled a laugh on Thursday when a journalist asked her during her press briefing at Montreal City Hall if the sum of 15.5 million announced Thursday morning by the minister head of Social Services, Lionel Carmant, would calm the crisis.
“It’s an amount that will make a bandage, a plaster. But homelessness is an open wound that bleeds. So we have to find a cure. We must put all the surgeons around the table to find the best solutions,” explained the mayor.
The latter also criticized on Thursday the article of Bill 31 which plans to considerably restrict lease transfers by tenants. “If, one day, we arrived at a point of balance or overabundance of housing, we could perhaps have this discussion. But I find that at the moment, we are making people who have no options even more precarious. »
The role of the CISSS and CIUSSS
In Quebec, Mayor Bruno Marchand considers that the additional aid granted by Quebec is a “step in the right direction”, but very modest compared to the strides made by poverty in the last five years.
“If we spend more money, but it doesn’t produce results, it’s useless,” says the elected official from the capital. We need annual statistics, we must be able to know if what we are doing is working. We can no longer postpone [grecques] and wait a year or two years [avant de voir] what it is. »
Bruno Marchand also criticizes the Integrated Health and Social Services Centers, whose commitment to homelessness varies. “We have very good CISSS and CIUSSS, we have “rotten” CISSS and CIUSSS, says the mayor of Quebec. The worst need to be inspired by the best: I don’t think we are going to find solutions to homelessness without the CISSS and CIUSSS being involved. Cities cannot play their role. »
Better consultation
Certainly, better funding is necessary, but we must also learn to work together to prevent people from reaching the streets and help them get off them, says James Hugues, general director of the Old Brewery Mission, an organization located to Montreal. He hopes that the different levels of government will take advantage of the summit to conclude a “homelessness pact” and end the era of action in isolation.
The general director says he has never seen, in 20 years of working in homelessness, such great challenges to overcome. “We have never seen so many encampments in public spaces, we have never seen so many addiction issues, we have never seen so many mental health issues and we have never had so much poverty in house our world. COVID has a gigantic impact, it is now obvious, he concludes. We now have the benefit of statistics: we must, in light of the count, increase our ambitions very, very significantly. »
With Zacharie Goudreault