Supportive Housing | “People here care about me”

Last spring, Colleen W. spent several nights outside in downtown Montreal because the homeless shelters she had been visiting for several months were crowded. To keep warm, she was forced to sleep pressed against friends in the same situation as her, on the ground in a park.

“We were woken up by the police, but they saw that we were only trying to keep warm,” says with a laugh the 60-year-old woman with long silver hair, who moves with difficulty with the help of ‘a walker.

The former nurse, who had to stop working due to serious health problems, found herself on the street following a series of problems and bad luck. Victim of abuse during her childhood in Pointe-Saint-Charles, introduced to crack by an ex-partner, she was traumatized by the circumstances of her mother’s death two years ago. Then, when she wanted to rent an apartment, she was the victim of fraud and found herself homeless. Hosted by her two children, successively, for a few months, she quarreled with them, before having to turn to shelters for homeless people.

Today, Colleen is lucky: she has a room of her own, a living room and a kitchen that she shares with another tenant and, above all, the support of workers from the organization Chez Doris, which manages a new 20-room house opened in June in the Latin Quarter.

” Always there for me ”

“I suffer from post-traumatic stress disorder and depression, so knowing that counselors are always there for me reassures me,” confides Colleen, who also needs help with her medical appointments, his visits to court, to register for detoxification, to be able to take adapted transportation and for a multitude of other problems which often require painful bureaucratic procedures.

Because if Colleen is out of the streets, she’s not out of the woods yet. She still battles a crack addiction and spent three days in jail this week after a complaint was filed against her for assault.

But thanks to the support Chez Doris offers her, she is convinced she can get through it.

Such housing, with the supervision of specialized workers, represents the best solution to try to put an end to homelessness, according to the organizations dedicated to this mission. But there are too few to meet the scale of the needs.

A network held at arm’s length

The importance of increasing such resources was part of the discussions during the Municipal Summit on homelessness, which was held Friday in Quebec.

Emergency shelters, where homeless people spend the night but must leave in the morning, cannot be considered long-term solutions, underlines Marina Boulos-Winton, director of Chez Doris, which administers, among other things, a 24-bed shelter in the west side of downtown.

M^me Boulos-Winton says recruiting employees is also problematic for the organization.

Shelters and other resources for homeless people are under the governance of various community organizations, which depend on government assistance and philanthropy and hold down a network incapable of meeting needs.

For example, the rooming house opened by Chez Doris cost 6.4 million in renovations; 5 million came from the federal government and the rest from private donors, notably from Montreal philanthropist Bash Shetty, who donated 1 million – the new residence also bears his name. The Quebec government, for its part, allocates a rent supplement, which allows residents to pay only 25% of their income for housing, while the monthly rent for each room has been set at $858.

According to a study by the Union of Municipalities of Quebec, presented Thursday in anticipation of the summit on homelessness, a person who benefits from such accommodation costs society less than if they lived on the street, in particular because she needs less health care and social services and because she is less burdensome to the justice system and police services, in addition to being more productive.

Among the women housed at the Chez Doris residence, who have been on the street for periods varying between 3 months and 10 years, some have mental health problems, such as a 62-year-old lady suffering from schizophrenia, who lost her apartment. at the start of the pandemic. Others have been evicted from their homes or suffer from cognitive problems and have no family to support them.

At all times, day and night, workers are on site to support them in their “social reaffiliation” processes: relearning how to cook, how to manage their home well, how to get rid of their addictions, how to respect others, how to function in society.

“My mother died alone and I only discovered her body after 12 days,” says Colleen. I’m really afraid of dying like my mother. But I know there are people here who care about me. So I want to stay there until I die. »