Montreal’s new emergency shelters see high demand amid cold and snow

Montreal temporary homeless shelter. (FILE)

Montreal’s emergency shelters have been busy since Mayor Soraya Martinez Ferrada promised 500 new spots by Christmas earlier this month.

The downtown YMCA opened its 100-place emergency shelter on Dec. 4 and the mayor says more than 450 people used it in just five days – it was even stretched beyond capacity some nights.

At last Wednesday’s council meeting, she said 57 people slept there the night it opened and that on Dec. 9, 132 people were hosted.

“I was told that on the first night, someone spent the night and said it was the first time in a long time he allowed himself a deep sleep and dreamed because he wasn’t scared for his life,” said Martinez Ferrada.

She added that 600 soup bowls were served, 1,100 coffees were distributed and donated clothes were handed to those in need.

The 211 line was also flooded with Montrealers asking how they can donate tents and sleeping bags, she said.

Work is still being done to open all 500 new shelter spaces, but the mayor said one at Hotel Dieu will open shortly.

She stressed that it’s important to make sure people know where to go and what resources are available to them.

“I saw people who spent hours outside in the cold,” said Martinez Ferrada. “I was outside for 45 minutes and I was freezing, so imagine people who find themselves in the street like that.”

Shelters over capacity

Those who work in the homelessness sector are used to being beyond capacity.

Chez Doris opened a women-only warming shelter to help fill the gap and says it still has a few spots available for new clients in urgent need despite its permanent shelter being full.

Sam Watts, CEO of the Welcome Hall Mission, says that there were about 900 emergency shelter spaces in the city – there are now nearly 3,000. While Welcome Hall never turns anyone away, its resources are stretched thin.

“And we’re all full,” Watts said. “It tells you that we are not resolving the problem upstream.”

Though Watts says emergency measures are needed to make sure no one else dies in the cold, all three levels of government must do more for long-term solutions.

“People move off those emergency spaces very quickly towards permanent housing. And to us, that’s really where we need to be focusing our energy,” said Watts.

“I think it’s a good thing what’s going on right now, the focus, the energy that’s being put into the issues around homelessness and precarity by the new administration … but my caution is, let’s not think that this is the solution.”

• READ MORE: A third Montreal-area senior has died after being found outside in the cold

Like the Welcome Hall Mission, the Old Brewery Mission is also full year-round.

President James Hughes says the winter is especially difficult as it’s harder for the Mission’s mobile clinic to get around and those who are used to sleeping in tents may not know where to go.

Like Watts, Hughes calls emergency shelters “band-aid” measures and points out that many aren’t open 24 hours.

“We need those. But ultimately, we need at the same time as we’re creating enough space for serving people facing homelessness right now, we need to build solutions to homelessness – and that’s really massively increasing the number of housing units we have available, transitional housing units, collective housing units, permanent housing units that we don’t have today,” said Hughes.

A new report from the Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation (CMHC) shows that affordable housing units in Montreal are quickly disappearing, which Watts – who also sits on the National Housing Council – finds concerning. According to him, Montreal lost 90,000 affordable units in the last few years as rent skyrocketed.

Watts stresses that there are solutions, they just require all levels of government and the health-care system to work in parallel. Quebec can increase its social housing stock and rent subsidy programs, for example.

In the meantime, the city is working to spread resources across the city and a crisis cell meets weekly to ensure the roll-out goes smoothly.

“Behind the numbers, there are people, human beings, lives and stories,” Martinez Ferrada told her council.