Cohabitation with the homeless | On the way to court

This is perhaps the start of a trend: recourse to the courts by citizens fed up with suffering the repercussions of homelessness in their backyard.

The news came out a few days ago. Two requests for class action were filed, one after the other, due to the inconvenience caused by the installation of shelters in residential neighborhoods in Montreal¹.

The list of grievances is long and disturbing.

In Milton-Parc, a densely populated area of ​​Plateau-Mont-Royal, citizens have denounced the deterioration of their quality of life since the arrival of the organization The Open Door in 2018, in a church basement.

According to the appeal, the homeless people who gravitate around the shelter “urinate, defecate, have sexual relations, consume alcoholic beverages and illicit substances, litter the ground with their waste, syringes, cans, clothes and abandoned food”.

These behaviors attract rats, in addition to “intimidating” the residents of an entire quadrangle, states the document. Neighbors are often woken up at night by screams or fights, it is added.

My colleague Martin Tremblay bore witness to this human misery in a striking photo essay published in 2022². The situation in Milton-Parc has not improved since. I go there often and it’s pitiful, it’s true.

The second legal proceeding, filed by the same lawyer, draws a similar story. She describes how the tranquility of a neighboring neighborhood has been disturbed since the installation of an enormous refuge in the former Hôtel-Dieu.

What exactly do these appeals require? The closure of these centers until adequate health care has been provided to each homeless person who frequents them. (Good luck.)

Also: compensation of $25,000 for each citizen disturbed by the mayhem. A theoretical bill of several tens of millions of dollars.

These procedures seek to identify those responsible. They do not target the homeless people themselves, but rather the authorities who approved the opening of shelters in residential neighborhoods, without regard to the consequences for neighbors.

The list is long: the government of Quebec, the City of Montreal, the parish factory (which rents premises in a church), the University of Montreal Hospital Center (CHUM) and the CIUSSS du Centre-Sud- de-l’Île-de-Montréal are singled out.

It will be up to the Superior Court to determine whether these class actions deserve to move forward. Experts I spoke to on Monday doubt it. Me too. But whether it succeeds or not, this approach puts its finger on a very real problem.

A fundamental problem.

There are a series of authorities responsible for managing the issue of homelessness, but very often, we wonder who is leading the ship. More and more citizens and traders feel abandoned by the authorities. I understand them.

A very recent example: that of Maison Benoit-Labre, in the southwest of Montreal. This accommodation center for formerly homeless people, coupled with a supervised consumption site, opened its doors in April a few dozen meters from a primary school.

Sex antics and crack use in public, fights, camps: it doesn’t get out of hand pretty much around the establishment.

Everyone was outraged by the turn of events when the media reported it. But no one, it seems, was able, or willing, to question the location chosen to erect this center³. Neither the City of Montreal, nor Public Health, nor the Ministry of Health and Social Services.

Person.

Several parents are outraged. I can confirm this: legal proceedings are being prepared to try to force the authorities to account. A meeting took place on Monday to this effect, according to my sources.

Other appeals of this type are to be expected. New resources for the homeless will be announced in Montreal and elsewhere in Quebec, in residential neighborhoods, and the concerns of future neighbors are already great.

These few attempts at judicialization could turn into a trend, it seems.

The courts will not solve the homelessness crisis, that much is clear. It will take a lot more supportive housing, among other things.

But what becomes Also obvious is that the citizens who suffer the repercussions are losing patience. And they make it known.

We saw him in “crack alley,” in Chinatown and in the Gay Village in Montreal. Several residents, full of empathy and good faith, denounce the passivity of the City and the police services in relation to incivility.

Without denying the needs of the homeless and drug addicts, all these beautiful people (taxpayers, it should be remembered) are starting to demand accountability. Concrete gestures from the authorities, so that the sacrosanct “cohabitation” that we so often talk about is at least harmonious.

It will also require a precise game plan to keep – or restore – order in the neighborhoods where these resources are located. A detailed roadmap. What no authority seems to be capable of offering at the moment, neither in Quebec nor in Montreal.

1. Read the article “Neighbors demand $25,000”

2. Consult the photo essay “The faces of a humanitarian crisis”

Read the column “Not in my schoolyard”