“So hungry I could eat a whole lot”

Quebec had a shock in mid-September when it learned that the province had at least 10,000 homeless people. The Legault government has promised millions more to help. But until then, the crisis continues to worsen, with the announced or feared closure of certain shelters. Our columnist reports on the situation on the ground.

There is a summary of human misery, spread over six floors, at the foot of Mount Royal.

A shelter for 186 homeless people, which represents both an example of success in managing the homelessness crisis and a stark illustration of the flaws in the system.

It’s not joyful here, in the old Hôtel-Dieu in Montreal.

First there is this informal reception committee, gathered under a makeshift tent at the entrance to the hospital. I met a dozen homeless people there who were drinking and smoking crack in the morning sun, including Manon Grandmaison, 57 years old.

With tears in her eyes, her glass pipe in her hand, she told me about her cancers, her stroke, her difficulties finding accommodation, her problems with the shelter workers…

“I’m at my wit’s end ”, she summed up for me.

We would be less.

The atmosphere does not lighten when you cross the threshold of the old hospital founded by Jeanne Mance in 1645.

A disused pavilion has been welcoming society’s most polite people for two years. The six-story shelter is operated by the Mission Bon Accueil (MBA) and the Mission Old Brewery (MBO), in partnership with the CHUM, and it accepts just about anyone who doesn’t fit into any box in the system.

Heavy cases.

This center was designed as a transition point, halfway between emergency shelters and supervised housing. But for many cripples, it has become a place to live, by default.

The average stay here reaches 381 nights.

The Hôtel-Dieu refuge, as you will have understood, is very far from being a five-star palace. Several of the residents I spoke to have only one desire: to close their camp as quickly as possible.

Find accommodation, any accommodation.

And this is where the problem lies, very, very much, in the current crisis. Not a week goes by without a new staggering figure on the lack of housing making the headlines, and shelter residents are experiencing this shortage on the front lines.

The Hôtel-Dieu center therefore meets a basic need, that of providing a roof over its head for nearly 200 people. But here it is: it could have to close its doors next March.

Maybe, maybe not, no one knows yet.

The managers I met there are navigating in complete uncertainty. The program that finances them – which depends on funds from Ottawa and Quebec – has not yet been officially renewed.

The fate of other shelters is clearer. The one located at the Guy-Favreau Complex, in downtown Montreal, will close for good at the end of October, the federal government, owner of the building, having ended the lease.

Where will its 85 users end up? Mystery.

“We absolutely do not have the luxury of putting more people on the street, especially when we know that the current shelters are already full, and what we are ultimately trying to do is to re-affiliate these people- there in housing,” denounced Julie Grenier, spokesperson for the Movement to End Homelessness, which brings together around thirty organizations.

Things are going very badly, but there are still some filaments of hope through this fog of distress.

I spoke to you at the start of this column about the “success” of the project carried out at the Hôtel-Dieu.

This is a good example of debureaucratizationif we want.

Its success is based on the speed with which the accommodation center was set up, in 2021, in the heart of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Public institutions – the CIUSSS, the CHUM – and community organizations collaborated in an unprecedented way, which made it possible to make this shelter operational in record time.

“If I go back before 2020, everyone said it was going to take 10 years to see change within the ecosystem, and within two weeks, everything must have changed,” Sam Watts, the CEO of the Mission Bon Accueil. It gave us a little bit of hope: if government actors were able to act quickly, we might be able to see real changes focused on housing. »

Even if adapted housing is extremely rare, no less than 218 homeless people who stayed at the Hôtel-Dieu have been supported and redirected to supervised housing since 2021. This deserves to be underlined.

***

Sam Watts explained to me the twists and turns of the homeless care system in Montreal. I met him at the Macaulay emergency shelter, managed by his organization in the west of the city center, where 150 homeless people come to sleep every night, before leaving with their bundles in the early morning.

One of the main pitfalls in the homelessness issue is the scattered management of the issue, torn between several ministries, government agencies and community organizations.

“Everyone is responsible to some extent, but no one is accountable,” laments Sam Watts.

This diffuse governance is one of the problems that the Minister responsible for Social Services, Lionel Carmant, promised to tackle in an interview he gave me in September. He is considering creating super-coordinator positions in each region, who would play the role of conductors, if you will. We’ll see.

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Hurry up. Even though it’s unseasonably warm these days, the cold season is fast approaching and many shelters risk overflowing. The City of Montreal estimates that there will be a shortage of around 200 places this winter if additional funds are not invested.

The situation, already perilous, could become critical.

You only need to walk the streets for a few minutes to see that the number of homeless people, lying on the sidewalks or crowded into makeshift camps, has increased sharply in recent weeks.

I saw one of them begging in a metro station near my home, in a quiet residential area of ​​the metropolis. He was holding this sign: “So hungry I’d eat a whole lot.” »

A shock formula, and a punch straight to the heart.