I am a worker on these teams that the City is funding this winter to promote the cohabitation of people experiencing homelessness and others in Montreal. I am also a homeless researcher who took time off work to lend a helping hand to populations for whom our winter is a struggle for survival, while homeless services struggle to find sufficient employees. I would like to speak to you, Mayor Valérie Plante, about what I see in this work that you are financing and to make a request to you on behalf of the people who are targeted by your actions.
Just recently, I met a couple in the street, one of many, who had been sleeping outside for three days. With emergency shelter resources for women being completely full, the man and woman chose to stay together to face the perils of the night and the cold specific to the Montreal winter. You might imagine that sleeping in a poorly equipped tent is a challenge in itself, but that day, these people, and our team along the way, faced an additional challenge. They also had to find quick solutions because a police team would have thrown away their tent and their personal belongings, which allowed them to be less at risk of dying from the cold.
This couple is just one among others, and everyone can see the increase in the visible face of homelessness in Montreal.
I know the scale of the crisis that your administration is facing and I know that the answers will not only come from the municipal level. I also understand that homelessness is visible in cities, even if the means to prevent and combat it often also lie elsewhere. However, let me tell you, from my well-informed posture and with my fingers still cold from the time spent with people in camp, that we cannot hope to hide homelessness in Montreal without causing more suffering and that we risk then an explosion in its quantity and visibility.
We have to be able to give people what they need to survive, of course, but also what they need to get by. If it is a question of humanity and basic solidarity, it is also, in the long term, the only way to allow healthy cohabitation in the city. Living with poverty will never be comfortable for anyone. Neither does living it, for that matter.
In a context of housing crisis and marked increase in homelessness and precariousness, where we counted in October 2022 that a minimum of 4,690 people were homeless in our city while we only have of 1,600 emergency accommodation places in sometimes more than precarious conditions, how is it possible that the City is still dismantling, and even more so under the pretext of safety, in the middle of winter?
We are facing a humanitarian crisis which requires long-term solutions, but which also calls for compromises which prioritize the needs of the people who suffer the most, namely people experiencing homelessness, although the situation is difficult for domiciled citizens as well. Encampments are not necessarily the best we can wish for for people experiencing homelessness, but until they have other options, is it not immoral to require them to not being outside when they can’t be inside either?
We can be angry, and rightly so, about what makes homelessness exist and no longer want to see it in our city. However, it is counterproductive to direct this anger or these efforts at invisibility against the people who are at the heart of this social violence and who are only trying to survive it. We must instead devote the energy of this anger to rebuilding and solidifying the solidarity that prevents homelessness, promotes exit from it and supports the people who experience it.
As long as we are in a situation of social crisis, in terms of housing as well as the financing of community resources and public services, I therefore ask you, Madam Mayor, on behalf of the people I support, to do your part by putting an end to to dismantling and clean-up operations which are carried out with disregard for human rights. These are not acceptable and sufficient answers. We must actively commit to instead putting in place sufficient and dignified alternatives to respond to emergencies that exceed our means when winter arrives, by providing affordable and suitable housing options for everyone.
Visible camps should encourage us to identify the real problems to change the situation. People experiencing homelessness do not belong on the streets and in the shadows: they are part of our community and have a future as residents, if we collectively commit to getting there with them.