Workers who help the homeless in Montreal feel helpless as the crisis worsens

By Katrine Desautels, The Canadian Press on December 22, 2024.

MONTREAL – Social workers on the front lines against homelessness in Montreal say they feel increasingly helpless as more people find themselves forced to live in tents during the winter.

Stéphanie Lareau has worked with the homeless in Montreal for 20 years. Normally, the tents start disappearing in December, but this year is different, she said.

“This will be the first year for me that there are so many and there aren’t a lot of places to go. In August I called the shelters and they were full every day. This never happened before,” Lareau said.

As temperatures drop in Montreal, homeless shelters are overcrowded and warming stations – equipped with chairs, not beds – are operating at capacity. Unhoused people wander in subway stations, while others sleep standing up in restaurants open 24 hours a day. Many set up tents to survive the winter.

The situation has already proven deadly. On December 15, a 55-year-old homeless man was found dead in a Montreal park. Authorities believe he may have died of hypothermia.

Alison Meighen-Maclean, who has worked with the homeless for a decade at Montreal’s eastern regional health authority, said people urgently need a roof over their heads. The warming stations the city installed this year are not meeting the need because they are only designed to keep people indoors for a short time, she said.

In early December, the Quebec government said it had housed 1,000 of the province’s homeless people, a population that would rise to around 10,000 in 2022. A new count of unhoused people in Quebec is planned for January 2025.

Quebec Social Services Minister Lionel Carmant said organizations that support the homeless were behind the apparent reduction. He also credited a government program that provides mental health services while helping people find housing.

For Meighen-Maclean, the housing and homelessness crises are linked.

“In today’s market, it’s very difficult to get back into the (housing) market once you’ve been rejected,” she said, explaining that many are experiencing homelessness for the first time. Some, she said, were surviving on welfare and were evicted or lost their jobs.

“Everyone who works with the homeless feels very helpless on a daily basis,” Meighen-Maclean said.

Lareau said the increase began to explode during the COVID-19 pandemic, adding that the picture of homelessness has changed. In some cases, elderly people are kicked out of their apartments, she said.

“Sometimes they don’t really know the laws or their rights, so they get screwed a bit,” she says.

“Renovation” describes a situation in which a landlord cites the need for major renovations as a reason for eviction.

Carmant noted that the government has increased funding to combat homelessness from a five-year budget of $280 million to $410 million.

“This year we added another $15 million, and thanks to the federal investment, that will be another $25 million over the next two years. We have improved the plan several times, both in terms of emergency measures and housing assistance,” he said in an interview.

Carmant also said he wants to see more supportive housing in the coming years.

“We talk a lot about shelters, but we have a lot of people who are still in shelters after 12, 18, 24 months,” he said, adding that the goal is to provide support to people once that they leave a shelter so they don’t. return to the street.

“When they’re ready to become more independent, we put them in what we call supportive housing, where they have their own kitchen… there’s no common areas, it’s really like a apartment,” he said.

Laurie Mercure, head of the Concurrent Disorders, Addictions and Homelessness Department at the Eastern Montreal Health Authority, welcomes these promising programs. However, she said too many people fall through the cracks, particularly seniors who need apartments tailored to their needs, couples and those with pets, all of whom face barriers additional accommodation.

Despite the uphill battle, Meighen-Maclean, Mercure and Lareau all emphasized that community organizations and stakeholders build trust with unhoused people so they are open to accepting help, even if it means getting a health insurance card, which for some is their only identity document.

Sending nurses into the field also makes a difference. “I think we can prevent a person’s condition from deteriorating by going into their environment. It doesn’t matter if it’s a shelter or a camp, with nursing care we may be able to avoid hospitalization or a trip to the emergency room,” Meighen-Maclean said, explaining that such support results in fewer 911 calls and de-escalation.

One of the objectives, she says, is to support the person towards services, so that they can access care in the same way as Quebecers who are not on the street. “We are seeing improvements in access to services. But it’s not perfect. There is still work to be done,” she said.

This report by The Canadian Press was first published Dec. 22, 2024.

The Canadian Press’s health coverage is supported by a partnership with the Canadian Medical Association. CP is solely responsible for this content.

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