The announcement of the closure of the Archambault store on rue Berri, even if it is not a strictly LGBTQ business, is seen as another ordeal that has befallen the Village. Citizens, merchants and community groups are at the end of their resources and have been told for months by public institutions that they can do nothing to curb the current cohabitation issues that are part of their daily lives. With the various works and constructions that are coming in the area, will we have to resign ourselves to waiting several more years before vitality and a sense of security return to the neighborhood? This prospect is not only depressing, it is unacceptable!
On social media, many blame Valérie Plante personally for the degradation of the sector, accusing her of not liking the Village and of only going there for photo ops. This is to make her a very easy scapegoat for tendencies already present even before she came to power.
On traffic issues, the former president of the Village’s Société de développement commercial (SDC) already said in 2014, during a talk on the future of the Village for the 30e LGBTQ magazine anniversary Runaways, that even the gay district of New York could no longer fill its bars seven days a week, as in the previous decade. The ethnography commissioned in 2019 by the SDC also confirmed this need to rethink the local economy.
Even the tensions with the homeless in the neighborhood do not date from the opening of an emergency shelter financed by Quebec and the City of Montreal in the Place Dupuis hotel in the winter of 2020. In 2012, merchants mobilized under the “I love my Village! while in 2014 the Pink Squares and the Pink Block both promoted their divergent views on security in two simultaneous marches.
Faced with the increasing incivility and theft in plain sight, faced with the premises left vacant by the owners (and having caused fires and collapses in recent years), many are calling for more police repression. However, Montreal is already one of the Canadian cities with the highest rate of police officers per inhabitant, and the police forces themselves admit the limits of their interventions in the face of human misery.
With an ever-increasing budget, why do the police then “fail” to protect us? Because we expect her to play the superhero alone where a multitude of measures are needed to think about security, from street animation to land use planning, including prevention, new policies against real estate speculation and a strong social safety net where all players are encouraged to play a role.
Citizens, merchants and organizations lit the ” bat-signal alarm in the sky for too long already.
Bring stakeholders together
Where are the CIUSSS Centre-Sud and the Ministry of Health, which are responsible for homelessness and mental health issues? Where are the community networks to propose innovative pilot projects? Where are the provincial and federal governments to provide social housing in new housing developments and keep the LGBTQ population in the neighborhood?
Where is Tourisme Montréal to help collectively rethink neighborhood promotion strategies? Where are the players in Montreal’s economic development? Where are the urban planners, researchers, economists, cultural actors and festivals, however abundant in the territory?
But above all, where are the landlords and property developers, who are letting their premises deteriorate without allowing communities to revitalize them?
Certainly, we must demand greater leadership from the City. It is not just a question of thinking about the redevelopment of the Sainte-Catherine Est artery, even if it really needs it. New solutions are needed for vacant premises and immediate temporary interventions before works on the street. But to the question “where is Valérie Plante?” “, we must also add: where are Legault, Fitzgibbon, Duranceau, Dubé and Carmant? Where are Trudeau, Bennett, Duclos and Hussen? The City should take responsibility for setting up a ” great task force », a coordination committee in various fields of competence, and ensure that the various levels of government respond to the call to support it.
Let’s be realistic: a single superheroine will not save us, we must bring the stakeholders together now, because we know that it takes a Village…