Homeless people waited for hours for a place at the new Verdun shelter which opened its doors Friday evening, after the dismantling of the Complexe Guy Favreau accommodation center, in Montreal’s Chinatown.
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“We’re going to stay here until it opens. We have no choice, we have nowhere to go,” explains Juliette Roussel.
The 58-year-old woman was one of five or six people who arrived around 2 p.m., five hours before the doors opened at 7 p.m.
She has been on the street for nine months. Since then, she has been attending the Complexe Guy-Favreau shelter. She had to leave this place at 5 a.m., this time so as not to return there in the evening.
Moving
The Chinatown emergency shelter that opened during the pandemic has closed for good due to major construction.
The City of Montreal has offered to temporarily relocate him to a building in Verdun which is to be converted into affordable housing this spring.
The new homeless shelter in Verdun was scheduled to open its doors at 7 p.m.
Photo Anouk Lebel
“We took the taxi, it cost us $31, but we didn’t really know where it was,” explains M.me Roussel, who had never set foot in Verdun before.
For his part, Padr Ben covered the 6 kilometers that separate the Guy-Favreau Complex from the new refuge, on foot.
“I was given the address and told I would have a bed,” says the 40-year-old.
15 fewer beds
Unlike the Complexe Guy-Favreau shelter, the Verdun shelter will offer services 24 hours a day, seven days a week.
However, it will only have 50 beds, while that of the Complex had 65, in addition to 20 seats.
“It’s concerning. That’s 85 fewer places in a place where there is very high demand and not everyone will come. [du centre-ville à Verdun] to have a bed,” reacted the director of the Support Network for Single and Homeless People of Montreal, Annie Savage.
She deplores that as winter approaches, the community must hold down the fort to house vulnerable people.
The Social Development Corporation (SDC), which manages the shelter, declined our interview requests. “We are very busy with the move,” said Widad Reghai, chief coordinator, on site.