It’s not just in Montreal that shelters for the homeless are overflowing. This is also the case in its suburbs. In the Laurentians, but also in Laval and Longueuil, organizations fear that the arrival of the cold season and a new wave of COVID-19, combined with a lack of funding and manpower, will force them to turn away people in need this winter.
“Everything is full, all the time. And it’s not winter yet”, drops the coordinator of the Network of Homelessness Organizations and Stakeholders of Laval, Mathieu Frappier, in an interview at the To have to Wednesday. In the third largest city in Quebec, 169 “visible” homeless people were counted during the 2018 count, significantly fewer than in Montreal, where 3,149 were noted. But as in the metropolis, the estimate that will be drawn from the new count held this Tuesday on Jesus Island may be revised upwards.
“There is a very, very strong increase in needs, which are more intense than before,” insists Mr. Frappier, who notes that shelters in Laval often have to turn away homeless people, for lack of available places. A situation that he associates in particular with the rapid rise in rents in the north shore of Montreal as well as the increase in the cost of living, two factors that are pushing a growing number of people to have to choose between food and housing, he observes.
Concern is therefore high as winter approaches, which rhymes each year with increased demand in homeless shelters. Especially since a new wave of cases of COVID-19 is looming on the horizon, thus threatening to reduce the reception capacity by contaminating itinerant as well as responders, notes Mr. Frappier. And he speaks with knowledge: Laval’s main emergency shelter has been struggling with an outbreak of the virus since last Thursday. “It’s heavy,” he says.
A speculation that hurts
Further north, in the Laurentians, the health network is also seeing an increase in the needs of the homeless. In 2018, the count identified 190 “visible” homeless people on the streets of the region. But again, that number seems to have increased since then. “That’s the impression we have,” says the interim director of mental health, addiction and psychosocial services programs for adults at the CISSS des Laurentides, Louis Rousseau.
Currently, the region’s accommodation resources are not filled to their maximum capacity, in particular because homeless people “choose to be more on the street”, according to him. “Now, when the cold weather arrives, will there be enough places available? This is what concerns us, ”adds Mr. Rousseau, who ensures that the health network is hard at work to try to increase the reception capacity of the region.
To explain the potential increase in the number of homeless people in the Laurentians, Mr. Rousseau notably points to the exodus of many Montrealers to the region, where they have bought and “renovated” “chalets”, contributing to an increase property values and rents. “It has a direct impact on some people” with low incomes, he notes.
Meanwhile, in Longueuil, the general manager of the Halte du coin, Nicholas Gildersleeve, deplores that the reception capacity of the emergency shelter created in 2020 has dropped from 35 to 20 beds in the last few months. The situation is linked to a lack of funding granted to the organization, he says. Governance issues and repeated complaints from the neighborhood would also be involved in this administrative decision, according to our information.
Be that as it may, it is the homeless people of Longueuil who suffer from the situation. “In recent weeks, we have been very worried because there are evenings when we have refused 5 people, 10 people, 13 people,” notes Mr. Gildersleeve. “It’s one thing when it’s summer and people who have been turned down go to sleep in camps, in places where the bad weather won’t affect them too much. But what’s to come [avec l’hiver], these are risks to their health, so we are quite worried. »
The mayoress of Longueuil, Catherine Fournier, ensures for her part that the shelters of the city will not lack places this winter. “We are deploying all the resources so that this is not the case”, she declared on Wednesday in a brief interview with the To have to.
Service counters for the homeless
There is a very, very strong increase in needs Mathieu Frappier”