The various businesses on Sainte-Catherine Street, at the Berri-UQAM metro exit, seem to have been suffering for a few years now. In 2020, during the pandemic, the closure of the L’Escalier bar, located just outside the metro, had a huge impact on us. However, the context was different from that of today.
The very recent announcement of the closure of the Archambault store, on the other hand, has more disturbing aspects in its justification. In a press release, Archambault mentioned: “An in-depth internal analysis revealed that the evolution of the urban fabric in the area of Place Émilie-Gamelin, combined with the evolution of consumer habits, no longer makes it possible to make profitable the commercial operation of the Archambault Berri, despite significant investments made in recent years. »
Although it is clear that the “urban fabric” has changed in the area, implying that this change acts as a drag on the economy of the neighborhood raises serious questions about how we perceive people in homelessness. In this sense, the closure of a business, however symbolic, should not make us forget the real issues at the heart of this event: the ineffectiveness of our policies to fight against poverty. More specifically, we believe that what is happening at Place Émilie-Gamelin is only highlighting the failure of our social policies in terms of homelessness and housing; both related.
Wherever they are numerous, homeless people are perceived, wrongly, as a problem. The eternal game of relocation and relocation is then played out. The dismantling of one camp forces the emergence of another, the closure of a temporarily established shelter forces the return to the streets of dozens of people; and the wheel turns.
Pointing out the homeless people who have settled in the Place Émilie-Gamelin sector and suggesting the addition of more police officers to help with “cohabitation”, as the Quartier des shows, is a more than dubious strategy which aims, once again, to regulate precarious people to allow the comfort of a certain class of merchants and consumers. This strategy has the wrong target, and it is imperative not to let the claims of a few investors dictate the direction of our social policies.
Solutions
Of course, far be it from us to pretend that it is easy to settle these questions. However, we believe that there are solutions. We argue that the best way to remedy this situation remains, in the medium term, a massive investment in social and accessible housing to serve the homeless populations of the city as well as quality resources in drug addiction prevention and psychological health.
In the longer term, it will be necessary to reflect on the importance of recognizing the right to housing as being fundamental to the life and dignity of our fellow citizens. This issue of housing is too important to be relegated almost solely to the private sphere and it is central to the advent of a fairer society.
In short, the fact that investors reject, even half-wordly, the responsibility of the commercial difficulties of a district on the itinerant populations is inappropriate; but beyond this reality, the refusal of the public authorities to do enough to help these populations testifies to the under-consideration that our governments show them.