As winter approaches, and at a time when the homeless encampment on Rue Notre-Dame Est is once again growing in Hochelaga, Mayor Valérie Plante is demanding to know the “game plan” of Quebec to avoid other deaths in the streets of Montreal.
Posted at 1:28 p.m.
“We are expecting additional help from the Quebec government, because the cold is coming, winter is coming. And hearing that someone died this week is a harsh reminder of what it’s like to live on the street,” argued M.me Plant in the press scrum, Friday, on the sidelines of an announcement on housing.
PHOTO PATRICK SANFAÇON, THE PRESS
The mayor of Montreal, Valérie Plante
She was thus referring to the report of The Presswhich reported Thursday that the number of homeless people dying in Quebec has exploded. Half of these deaths occurred on the streets of the metropolis.
This increase is all the more surprising as it comes three years after the frozen body of Raphaël André was found in a chemical toilet in Plateau-Mont-Royal, a death which had shone the spotlight on the difficult living conditions of people without a fixed address.
However, the Coroner’s Office has recorded no less than 72 deaths of homeless people in Quebec in 2023, compared to only around twenty per year from 2019 to 2021.
Beyond these dramas, Mme Plante claims to be particularly concerned by the situation of the encampment along Notre-Dame Street. Already more than a hundred people live in a green space along the busy boulevard between Viau and Frontenac streets, at dawn of the first snowfall.
According to the mayor, “we must be able to accompany these people to resources, to a warm bed, but also a place where there is running water, where they can eat and where they can be safe, because ‘We have seen fires in tents previously.’
The problem, she continues, is that the homeless shelters are all full. “And so, we are waiting with great impatience for the Quebec government’s plan for homelessness. What is the game plan for this winter? We consider that we need more emergency beds, for us it is obvious. »
We will be ready, and we will be there to support the government to help find places, but we need the minister to tell us how many beds he is planning, and the amounts we will have.
Valérie Plante
A little earlier, on Thursday, the Minister of Social Services, Lionel Carmant, had for his part argued that the current challenge, in homelessness, “is to seek out those who do not want to have services or who are refused by the services”.
“My next big mandate is to develop a trajectory in the health network for severe drug addicts. When someone is intoxicated on the street, people don’t really know where to send them because shelters don’t take them, and addiction rehabilitation centers take them up to a certain level of intoxication.” , he also explained.
