Encampments and other issues related to homelessness continue to escalate in and around Montreal, as does debate on how to best to serve that population and find solutions to the crisis.
It’s why advocates continue to pressure governments for more support for that population, which now numbers around 5,000.
“Every day when people come to us to ask for a place to stay, because they’ve had bad luck and they have nowhere to go, very often we are obliged to send them back to the streets,” says Anick Desrosiers of the group Réseau d’aide aux personnes seules et itinérantes de Montréal (RAPSIM).
It’s why so many people without homes live in encampments, she explains. She and other activists who work with the homeless population set up a camp at Victoria Square near Old Montreal, to protest the city’s practice of dismantling homeless encampments.
Desrosiers stresses that until the housing crisis improves, the city should find ways to support people living in encampments, instead of evicting them. According to her, when camp residents get kicked out they sometimes go to remote areas where they are hard to find, can’t get the services they need and end up being more vulnerable.
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Officials at the Old Brewery Mission agree that the encampments are a result of the housing crisis and also because facilities like theirs sometimes have no space. President and CEO James Hughes concedes that dealing with encampments is complicated.
“We also need to be really thoughtful about, if we do intervene, how we do it,” he points out.
His group is tackling the homelessness crisis on a different front, not only by expanding their services to meet the growing, more complex demands. They’re also putting more focus on something new.
“Prevention programs, for the first time,” he explains, “to find people at risk of homelessness and try to help them avoid the trauma that is homelessness.”
Wednesday they launched a five-year campaign to raise $50 million. A $5-million, donation from the Mirella and Lino Saputo Foundation, will go towards building a 27-unit housing complex on Pie-X Boulevard for people over 50.
“Where we accompany, with services, people who are at risk until they’re able to fly by their own wings and be autonomous,” Francesco Miele, the foundation’s executive vice-president told Global News.
That project is set to open by the spring of 2025. Old Brewery is also working on four other housing projects including the Tenaquip Place in Lachine. Hughes says, despite the crisis, he’s optimistic.
“I have more hope today than I did two years ago, and more than I did a year ago, because of how much investment we’re starting to see,” he explains.
Still, he cautions, there’s still a great deal of work to do to solve homelessness.