The spread of homeless encampments in Montreal has been a persisting issue, and now they’re popping up in suburban areas, including the south shore.
One inhabitant, Bryan Asbil, recently lost his apartment.
“I was helping someone who has been living in the streets, but then I, myself, ended up here,” he said as he paused to contain his emotions.
Asbil is now living on the streets of Greenfield Park — a borough of Longueuil. He sleeps in the corner of a government building at night. By day, he gathers everything he can to survive in the brutally cold weather.
It’s hard. “It shouldn’t be really,” Asbil said, his voice breaking down.
Asbil says he’s seeing more people in a situation of homelessness in the suburbs. But he believes the problem is bigger than it seems.
“There’s a lot of people hidden,” he says. “I guess they don’t want to be told, ‘Leave, go away.'”
Adovcate and head of Resilience Montreal, David Chapman agrees. He says the problem of homelessness is growing in general, made worse by governments dismantling encampments, such as the one in the Montreal’s Ville-Marie borough.
“Inevitably this does mean people moving into suburbs, into places where there is more space and less people and it’s not a positive dynamic at all,” Chapman said.
Chapman says this further isolates unhoused people, pushing them away from resources.
Even though, he says, those resources are often missing.
“Adequate mental health follow up… adequate following up with people once they move into apartments,” he listed.
Another key element missing he says: adequate subsidized housing and adequate shelter space year-round.
Last September, Quebec’s minister responsible for the fight against homelessness promised $15.5 million to municipalities to invest in emergency resources.
It’s part of the government’s action plan on homelessness, a total investment of $280 million over five years.
Asbil says he wants the government do more.
“I know the government is not doing enough, I know it. If they did anything enough, things would change for the better,” Asbil said.
The city of Longueuil says they are actively working with the local health authority, police force and local community organizations in the fight against homelessness.
“Our approach is focused on support and assistance in accessing necessary resources, rather than on the systematic dismantling of encampments, except in cases of public safety problems,” read in part an email from the office of Longueuil Mayor Catherine Fournier.
Furthermore, the city says it’s on track to build 114 new social housing units for the homeless population.
Other efforts include employing a social worker who coordinates resources for the unhoused, police interventions and prevention workers.
As for Asbil, he says he’s speaking out in the hopes that something is done for him and those he encounters every day in the same situation.
“It’s sad, I mean it’s sad,” he said.