Contrary to what many feared, no homeless person died of cold this winter in Quebec. Heat stops, overflow sites for shelters, last minute solutions had to be deployed everywhere to avoid the worst. First assessment of solutions resembling band-aids. Third text in our series.
Quebec City Mayor Bruno Marchand and other elected officials are visiting Helsinki this week to learn from its “zero homelessness” policies. However, it is above all by betting on access to housing that the Finnish capital has almost made homelessness disappear. An approach that is very difficult to imitate in Quebec in the midst of a shortage.
Researcher Céline Bellot compares the Finnish model to a “mille-feuille” in terms of housing. First, in Helsinki, the regular rental stock is vast. This is “the basis” of the famous mille-feuille, notes the professor at the School of Social Work at the University of Montreal who has been conducting research on homelessness for twenty years.
In the past, the city of 600,000 inhabitants multiplied the acquisitions of buildings, so much so that it owns 70% of the land on its territory and can control the supply of housing.
In addition, there are tens of thousands of social housing units and all sorts of transitional accommodation formulas. Above all, the government has invested heavily in psychosocial support, she points out. “There are 26-unit units with 12 workers. […] They invested in residential stability, but also in support. »
The number of homeless people in Finland has thus fallen from 20,000 to less than 4,000 since the mid-1980s. When Bruno Marchand speaks of zero homelessness, that is what he is referring to.
looking for doors
A proposal considered fanciful by many community stakeholders. Instead of a mille-feuille, many say they only have crumbs to offer people on the street trying to get out. “There is not enough transitional accommodation, not enough social accommodation with community support,” laments the coordinator of the Regional Collective for the Fight against Homelessness in the Outaouais (CRIO), Nick Paré. “It makes everything come back down. […] When you have people who would be ready to go to the next stage to, let’s say, get out of emergency accommodation, they are stuck at the level of transitional accommodation. And if they want to go to an apartment, forget it! »
In theory, these people are eligible for rent supplement programs (PSL in the jargon). PSLs are subsidies granted to landlords to supplement the share of housing that the tenant is unable to pay.
However, the PSL system has its limits, explains Céline Bellot. “It worked for a while. We gave a supplement and we managed to find accommodation. But there, the workers find less and less accommodation. So everyone is wasting energy and money because there aren’t enough doors. »
In fact, in some cities, such as Val-d’Or, there are simply no more doors, explains Stéphane Grenier, manager of the La Piaule refuge. “We have PSLs, but [on n’a] no owners,” he says. The presence of the mines and their attractive salaries made them prefer to rent to temporary workers.
Homeless people therefore stay at the La Piaule shelter for longer periods of time, which deprives new people of access to services. “They stay there longer because we have nothing to offer them. »
In Sherbrooke, the coordinator of the Table itinérance Sherbrooke, Gabriel Pallotta, observes the same phenomenon. “It’s a major problem. We create a bottleneck at the finish line. A situation complicated by another bottleneck, this time in access to mental health services, he points out.
More options, more needs
On the Quebec side, the picture is more nuanced. The system is tense, but not completely blocked.
At Squat-Basse-Ville, which houses young people who are at risk of ending up on the street, the waiting list is twice as long as the 17 places in the resource. Unable to access apartments on the market, young people tend to stay longer, notes the director, Véronique Girard. “We have some who are ready to leave, but have no way out. »
As for the YWCA, which welcomes women in vulnerable situations, doors are also rare, concedes the director, Stéphanie Lampron. “When I arrived here 12 years ago, we had 36 rooms and we had 300 refusals a year. Today, I have 60 rooms and we have reached 3,000 refusals. »
However, a little room for maneuver is emerging at the YWCA with the opening in June of a new rooming house, which will accommodate 14 women who are not yet ready to live on their own.
And despite the shortage, the organizations Clés en main and Porte-clé have succeeded this year in placing 82 people in apartments with a PSL, underlines the director of Clés en main, Mario Bousquet. “There are great successes,” he says. “But you can’t deny that the market is tighter. »
The government, he points out, has nevertheless relaxed certain criteria for access to LSPs for young people and people who have left homelessness. From now on, in Quebec, it is possible for them to access apartments whose rent is more expensive (up to 1200 or 1300 $ for a three and a half).
Unfortunately, it’s not like that everywhere. In Portneuf, the access criteria set according to median prices limit access to all dwellings over $600, he laments. “In Portneuf, I have 15 PSL that I am unable to assign. »
The director of Lauberivière, Éric Boulay, who has worked in the industry for 25 years, notes that he has “more tools and levers” than before to get people off the streets. The problem, he says, is that “the state of society is pushing more people into exclusion and increasing homelessness.”
The combined effect of the pandemic and the housing shortage has certainly scarred the picture of homelessness. But whether the effect is temporary or a new reality remains to be seen.
When I arrived here 12 years ago, we had 36 rooms and 300 refusals a year. Today, I have 60 rooms and we have reached 3,000 refusals.
On the ground, everyone says that the number of homeless people has increased. However, we do not yet have the data to measure it.
In the fall, a large counting operation of homeless people was carried out in a series of cities, but the results have not yet been made public.
In six months, the Union of Quebec Municipalities will hold its first major summit on homelessness. An exercise that aims to quantify the growing financial burden that this represents for municipalities. And to get out of the logic of emergency, recently underlined the mayoress of Gatineau, France Bélisle, in a public letter. “No permanent solution is currently planned. Every year, it is to start again. »