“We should all feel very sad when we see an encampment,” said Sam Watts, CEO of Welcome Hall Mission. “Because what it means is someone is not getting what they deserve. What everyone deserves is a permanent place to call home.”
A grocery cart packed with clothing, a mattress on the ground, and bags of personal items is set up just outside of the St. Michael’s Mission shelter in Montreal. Scenes like this are becoming more common across the city as shelters like this one are full.
Quebec’s housing crisis is getting worse, and for many, there are fewer and fewer options.
In 2022, the province estimated that about 10,000 people were visibly homeless — nearly half of them in Montreal. And those numbers continue to rise.
“For us, it becomes increasingly difficult to find solutions for the people who need them, and for me, that’s the most pressing concern. I think that if we see difficulties in public spaces, then that means that we need to find solutions to those problems directly,” said Executive Director of St. Michael’s Mission, Andrew Marrocco.
“We have to be tolerant by nature at the same time we have to be conscientious of the other inhabitants even of our building that we have to respect the relationship we have with them and to try and find ways of living well with our neighbors at the same time as respecting the needs of the people who are coming for our services.”
Sam Watts, CEO of Welcome Hall Mission, said, “For years now, we’ve been 100 per cent full. It’s not unusual for us to have to try to find a place for somebody whom we can’t accommodate on any given day. And what we really focus on is 24-7 care and making sure that people who come to our door can get what they need.”
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Following the release of the OCPM report on homelessness and social cohabitation, the City of Montreal announced on July 10 that it will not implement a moratorium on dismantling encampments on Notre-Dame Street.
In June, the STM brought back a ban on loitering in metro stations. Robert Beaudry, in charge of homelessness on the executive committee of the City of Montreal, says this measure was meant to develop adequate services for people in need.
“The ecosystem of care is overloaded. There are more entries than there are exits. Now Welcome Hall Mission, just us on our own, and other people are doing it too, we’ve managed to house more than 500 people in the last two and a half years. But the inflow into homelessness has been much greater than that,” said Watts.
“The solution is to respond to the people who are in these situations because their needs are not meshed with solutions that respond to their needs and consider where they are as individuals,” added Marrocco.
