Warming breaks | As soon as they open, already overwhelmed

How can we get the homeless off the street when we can only offer them a chair for the night in a shelter, if we manage to find one? A shelter from the cold, but which is only temporary, offers few services, no stability and zero comfort?

This is the problem faced by those working with homeless people in Montreal, especially since the arrival of cold weather.

“What we can offer them isn’t much. Sometimes we find a chair, but it can take time and require a lot of calls,” says Jephté Gourdet, worker and coordinator of the Mobile Mediation and Social Intervention Team (EMMIS) in the Hochelaga-Maisonneuve district. .

For a long time, homeless shelters have been filled to capacity and have had to turn away people in need. Night shelters have opened their doors for the winter, but they are also full every evening, despite the fact that they only offer a chair, a meal and a little comfort.

Fewer than 100 places have been added in heat centers in Montreal in recent weeks, thanks to government funding, according to audits of The Presswhile the mercury dropping below freezing pushes homeless people to take shelter.

Head on the table

“That’s not very good sleep.” I sleep on a chair, with my head on the table, on a pile of clothes,” relates Serge Nadon, a tall guy smiling despite adversity, met Tuesday evening at the Mission St-Michael heat stop, under -floor of a church on Stanley Street, in downtown Montreal.

Despite the discomfort, the heat stop is still better than nothing: the day before, due to lack of space, Serge Nadon had slept on boxes in front of the entrance to the Bonaventure metro station, without a blanket or sleeping bag. “By morning, I can tell you that it was really cold! “, he confides.

Mario Fortin, for his part, lived in a tent at the camp on rue Notre-Dame, in Hochelaga-Maisonneuve, but explains that he left, leaving all his belongings there, after being threatened by drug sellers. For about two weeks, he has been spending his nights outside or in business entrances, or at the St-Michael Mission if he is lucky enough to have a place.

“I haven’t slept in 14 days,” he said, his voice hoarse and his face gaunt. “I tried all the organizations, the Old Brewery Mission, the Maison du Père, but there is no room anywhere. »

Shower and sore feet

At the end of the day, while enthusiastic supporters of the Canadiens head towards the Bell Center outside, homeless people line up on the sidewalk in front of Saint-Georges Anglican Church to secure a place. Around 5 p.m., they invaded the basement of the church in no time at all.

They plop down on chairs, take off their boots, massage their aching feet. The most tired are already laying their heads on the tables to rest, despite the ambient hubbub and the music spitting from the speakers. Others go for a bowl of soup and a plate of rice and vegetables.

Workers circulate among them to ask them for news, see if there are urgent needs, coordinate the waiting list for the shower, etc.

A little later, the lights will be dimmed and a film will be shown, which will help calm the atmosphere.

The cramped room contains 50 seats and 10 camp beds, for which you must register for the chance to spend a maximum of one night per week. The services of the St-Michael Mission are normally offered during the day, but since November, the place has also been open at night, for the winter.

Some evenings, especially during the extreme cold, we have to turn away up to 60 people, deplores Andrew Morocco, community liaison officer for the organization. This is a serious problem since we cannot direct them anywhere else, all resources being saturated.

“These are not the best conditions, but it is an essential service and we must add resources throughout the network to prevent the situation from continuing and getting worse,” he insists.

Leaving people on the street

The other night shelters opened in recent weeks are also overflowing.

With its 30 chairs in Hochelaga-Maisonneuve, the CAP Saint-Barnabé organization regularly refuses around fifty people. “We see a lot of new faces, a lot of people who come from elsewhere in the city,” says Michelle Patenaude, general director of CAP Saint-Barnabé.

The night shelter for women at Chez Doris, which has so far only been able to add 6 places to its usual 24, has had to leave 19 to 34 homeless people on the street per evening over the last month. “We only received a response on November 11 to our request for funding for the winter, so we did not have time to organize everything yet,” explains the communications manager, Marie-Pierre Grenier. Chez Doris hopes to be able to offer 30 additional places shortly.

The Old Brewery Mission is offering 10 more seats for the winter at the Mission Café, which now has a capacity of 65 people. But the demand is such that 200 people visit the place every day, reveals Émilie Fortier, head of the organization’s emergency services. “We constantly exceed our capacity,” she says.

Two 25-place heat centers which have received funding from the Quebec government are not yet open: that of the organization L’route, in the Centre-Sud district, has still not found premises, and that of Prévention Côte-des-Neiges–Notre-Dame-de-Grâce has not finished developing its own.

This week, Mayor Valérie Plante called on Prime Minister François Legault to release funds, affirming that the City had locations for two additional heat stations.

“If we don’t increase services, there will still be deaths in the street,” fears Frédérik Charpentier, evening worker at Mission St-Michael.