The signs of difficult cohabitation between homeless people and Montreal residents are accumulating and increasing the feeling of insecurity among the population, but the president of the Old Brewery Mission maintains that the first victims of the crisis of homelessness are people who live on the streets.
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Although he recognizes that some homeless people are problematic, “people experiencing homelessness are the victims,” said Mr. James Hugues on LCN, Wednesday evening.
The echoes of these difficult and frightening events have accumulated this week.
Today, a pregnant woman told Benoît Dutrizac’s show on QUB that she was chased by an intoxicated homeless woman while she was going to pick up her child from daycare.
On Monday, two young Montreal women mentioned that not a week goes by without them being confronted with altercations with homeless people near the intersection of Berri and Sainte-Catherine.
And that’s without mentioning the many stories of difficult, even almost impossible, cohabitation near the supervised injection and inhalation center which opened alongside a school in the Saint-Henri district.
These are “horrible anecdotes”, underlines Mr. Hugues, and he assures that he feels “empathy” towards the people who have been confronted with situations of this kind, but he repeats that the people who live in the street, “it is they who are the victims of the same interactions”.
He informs that the problem of homelessness has worsened in the metropolis since the beginning of the 2000s and the pandemic has made the situation worse.
“Montrealers are experiencing the consequences of this growth,” adds Mr. Hugues. It’s appalling and unthinkable that we can continue to see this growth.”
Of the 5,000 people who are without housing in Montreal, 1,000 of them will have to sleep under the stars tonight due to lack of space in shelters, mentions the guest.
According to him, if we find housing for these people who do not have it, we will resolve these problems of difficult cohabitation.
“Let’s give people an option to live indoors,” he demands. There is no problem with cohabitation if people have a place to stay.”
To do this, the representative of the organization for homeless people calls for “innovative” and “ambitious” projects to ensure that this problem of “cohabitation is resolved”.
Watch James Hugues’ interview in the video above.
