The Old Brewery Mission, which manages several emergency shelters in the metropolis, gave itself a new mandate a year and a half ago: prevent homelessness at the source. The organization has since supported more than a hundred people at risk of finding themselves on the street in their search for affordable housing, learned The duty.
People leaving prison or an addiction treatment centre, asylum seekers and low-income tenants threatened with eviction are among the groups at high risk of ending up on the streets that the Old Brewery Mission has been supporting since the launch, in the fall of 2021, of its homelessness prevention programs.
Originally, what prompted the organization to set up these services was the “frustration” felt within it at the significant increase in the number of homeless people in the metropolis during the pandemic, notes interviewing the President and CEO of the Old Brewery Mission, James Hughes. A situation that had the effect of overloading emergency shelters in Montreal. “It’s this realization that it doesn’t work just to treat homelessness” by offering a temporary shelter to people who find themselves on the street, which prompted the Old Brewery Mission to act, explains Mr Hughes.
The organization then worked to “find an early intervention mechanism” in order to “reduce the pressure” on emergency shelters, while preventing upstream “the trauma” that many vulnerable people would have to experience otherwise. if they found themselves forced to sleep in the street, specifies the CEO It is then “a whole new project that began” for the organization, rather accustomed before to try to rehouse people already in a situation of homelessness , adds Mr. Hughes.
Find accommodation
Since the fall of 2021, the organization has supported more than a hundred people at risk of homelessness through its prevention services. Of the lot, 35 have so far found housing, while the others are at different stages of support towards an affordable roof, which is less and less easy to find in the metropolis. Accompanied persons can count on the community housing bank held by the Old Brewery Mission, which collaborates with other organizations and actors in the private sector to find apartments to offer these individuals.
“This is an important turning point in the way to fight against homelessness in Quebec,” says the director of homelessness prevention at the Old Brewery Mission, Georges Ohana. “Ambitions in terms of prevention make sense at the economic and social level, but more importantly, I think, it makes sense at the level of human rights,” he argues.
Because currently, many people find themselves on the verge of the street because of their financial or social vulnerability. In particular, research has shown that incarcerated people are more at risk of ending up on the street, and vice versa. Thus, by helping these people find accommodation when they leave prison, the Old Brewery Mission hopes to prevent them from further clogging up the emergency shelters in the city, which are particularly busy on the sidelines of the 1er July, the traditional moving day, notes James Hughes.
“We must act before the 1er July to ensure that these people who are at obvious risk of homelessness are accompanied before they find themselves without any other option”, underlines the CEO
In order to target people at risk of homelessness, the Old Brewery Mission has also created a dozen partnerships with as many organizations working in particular with incarcerated people, such as the Elizabeth Fry Society of Quebec, or the YMCAs of Quebec. , which provide temporary accommodation for refugees and asylum seekers. The Office municipal d’habitation de Montréal and the Maison LI-BER-T, which supports women coming out of an addiction treatment centre, also refer people at risk of homelessness to the Old Brewery Mission, in order to that the organization helps them find housing that meets their needs.
“A drop in the ocean”
However, the Old Brewery Mission’s prevention programs currently have only a limited scope, in particular due to a lack of available funds, notes Georges Ohana. “It’s a drop in the ocean in terms of social precariousness,” he says about the number of people supported by the organization since the launch of its prevention services.
In addition to trying to join forces with other organizations to expand its field of action, the Old Brewery Mission is also calling on the Quebec government to ask it to help fund its prevention services, says Mr. Ohana.
The Ministry of Health and Social Services did not respond to questions from the Duty at the time these lines were written.