Due to the major renovations that will be carried out at the Guy-Favreau Complex, the homeless shelter located there will have to be relocated as of October 31. The City of Montreal announced Friday that a vacant building in Verdun will temporarily house the accommodation service.
To avoid a breakdown in service, the City had been looking for some time for a site to relocate the emergency shelter which accommodates 85 homeless people every evening — 65 beds and 20 seats. Ultimately, it was the former Les Jardins Gordon seniors’ residence, located in Verdun, which was chosen as the temporary site. The City purchased this vacant building last June with the intention of developing between 70 and 90 affordable housing units.
“In the meantime, given the crisis of vulnerabilities and the increase in the number of people experiencing homelessness throughout the metropolis, including in Verdun and in the Grand Sud-Ouest, the borough [de Verdun] has accepted that this building will temporarily serve as an emergency accommodation service,” said Verdun Mayor Marie-Andrée Mauger in a post on her Facebook page on Friday.
The elected official recognizes, however, that the arrival of a homeless shelter in this residential area could raise concerns. The City therefore intends to organize a citizens’ meeting on this subject in the coming weeks.
“It seemed immoral to us to leave a building vacant this winter, rather than making it temporarily available so that vulnerable people could be safe and warm,” she wrote.
The shelter, managed by the Social Development Corporation with funding from the Center-Sud-de-l’Île-de-Montréal Integrated University Health and Social Services Center (CIUSSS), opened its doors during the pandemic in the former YMCA of the Guy-Favreau Complex. Last August, residents of Montreal’s Chinatown denounced the increase in crime and drug use in their area. Some of them blamed the Complexe Guy-Favreau homeless shelter.
Solution for winter
The City has offered to lend Quebec the Gordon Gardens building, located at 1050 Gordon Street, but the occupation of the premises for the shelter will be limited to the winter period, Mayor Valérie Plante warned on Friday.
“We bought it to provide affordable housing,” she said during a press scrum on the sidelines of the annual Night of the Homeless event. “We want to help and we want to make sure that no one sleeps outside. […] But at the end of spring, we begin renovations for the initial project, which is affordable housing. »
The mayor assured that the City and the organization that manages the shelter would meet citizens of Verdun who may have apprehensions about the arrival of a shelter in their neighborhood. It is also planned for the shelter to be open 24 hours a day, she mentioned.
For his part, the Minister responsible for Social Services, Lionel Carmant, argued that he was collaborating with his colleague Minister responsible for Housing, France-Élaine Duranceau, in order to find more sustainable solutions to fight against homelessness and to accelerate the construction of social housing and supervised housing.