In 25 years, public authorities have invested more than $500 million in the rehabilitation of the Saint-Roch district in Quebec: the Jean-Paul L’Allier garden, the head office of the University of Quebec, INRS, TELUQ , the Méduse artists’ center, Olivier Dufour’s Reactor, the demolition of the Mall and tax credits for information technologies, which encouraged the significant arrival of residents and local businesses.
More recently, 20 million in public funds were devoted to the construction of the YMCA of which the City of Quebec is also a tenant for its district and for which it pays annually $760,000 to manage these facilities and 32.5 million in public funds for the failed move of the Lauberivière shelter dedicated to housing the homeless. Since then, these two points of contact have become the crossroads of dementia and indifference.
As also reported by Thomas Gerbet of Radio-Canada for certain neighborhoods of Montreal and Gatineau, daily for more than two years residents and merchants of the Saint-Roch neighborhood in Quebec have been exposed to the worst spectacles.
Urine on the walls of properties, human excrement on the sidewalks or forecourts, masturbation and fellatio in broad daylight before the eyes of residents, cheap drug dealers taking advantage of the most vulnerable, drinking at all hours of the day and night on the flowerbeds and in public places, public drug use, dirty syringes in property entrances, screaming and psychotic attacks, abandoned trash, vomiting, wild camping in parks, pimp and his prostitute, broken windows of residences and offices, mischief to parked vehicles, tire theft, motorcycles on public sidewalks, verbal attacks, spitting in the face, firefighters putting out brush fires, charred chemical toilets, metal fences around public places, buildings covered with plywood, arsonist, emergency ambulances and police cars, etc. not to mention the record number of commercial premises for rent.
A dizzying circus never seen for 35 years.
All these “marginals” are nevertheless connected to their cell phones, their drugs and their alcohol all day long without the public authorities demanding from them any compensation or commitment to take charge of themselves in exchange for the wall-to-wall services from which they benefit. . It is enough to list the case of public toilets monitored 18 hours a day by security agencies, discounted meals, discounted accommodation, social assistance, social and medical assistance services, ambulance drivers, etc. .
All under the gaze of stunned tourists, children and parents attending the YMCA.
One observation is clear: citizens, residents and merchants have been directly threatened with their physical and psychological security for more than two years. Furthermore, their properties depreciate in such a context while over 35 years of taxation, more than $350,000 in taxes have been paid by numerous individual owners to support Nouvo Saint-Roch while the community services they subsidized are often exempt from taxes. Paradoxically, this is a very poor use of the property tax that the cities are claiming.
Faced with such a peak of decline, it is clear that public authorities, ministers, mayors and health agency officials have resigned and abandoned their citizens to a legal no man’s land, to a ghetto without public order and to a state of lawlessness. The police protect the municipal employees who clean the parks but are forbidden to stop the intolerable. The state has vanished. What should citizens do in such circumstances?
Small properties on a human scale or housing cooperatives create more conditions for true autonomy for homeless people instead of accommodation supermarkets. We must demand accountability and results from recipients of public assistance while the labor shortage rages. These marginalized people and these delinquents, who often refuse to take charge of themselves, nevertheless have all the potential to participate in improving their lot and that of others.
Yes to “Living together”, but no to “Drunk together”. The dignity of the homeless deserves better than the embarrassing parade of their suffering in the open air. They need care, not joints.