The mayor of Longueuil, Que., is promising not to dismantle her city’s many homeless tent encampments, saying she has no alternative shelter to offer in place.
“Shelters are full but we have to be careful because some citizens experiencing homelessness don’t want to go to shelters,” Catherine Fournier said. “Or they are being refused because they have a dog, for example, and they don’t want to leave the animal.”
Fournier also said she believes she would need a court order to vacate the encampments, because with no alternative, it would violate basic rights to shelter.
Fournier made the comments at a morning press conference from Longueuil city hall, where she unveiled her city’s three-year action plan to tackle homelessness. She said Longueuil is experiencing a homelessness crisis like never before, one that has skyrocketed since the pandemic began.
“We always had homelessness, most around the metro, but now it’s all around the city,” Fournier said. “We have 12 camps in our three boroughs, and especially since the beginning of the pandemic of COVID-19, we saw an important rise in homelessness on our territory.”
Fournier says anywhere from 200 to 1,000 people are experiencing homelessness in the city.
She is committing $825,000 this year alone to tackle the issue. The mayor wants to ensure city employees including police, firefighters and librarians are well trained to help those struggling. She is considering bringing in a supervised, mobile drug consumption facility. Fournier said she wants to build more long-term social housing. And she wants to create an awareness campaign to sensitize citizens in her community to the problem of homelessness, believing a better understanding of the issue will reduce stigmas.
She wants a more permanent home for the shelter La Halte du Coin, currently run out of a church. It started accepting itinerants in 2020, but only has room to house 35 people overnight. Several tents are dotted outside the church, for people who are turned away. Locals who work at the shelter say more resources are needed.
“We don’t have place for everybody. It’s why we have some tents,” said Myriam Massicotte-Ecard, a shelter employee. “It’s good (the mayor) sees a problem. People all have their own story. It’s hard to rent an apartment when your credit is bad and the landlords have a lot of demands. It’s right she has a tolerance for (tent encampments).”
The mayor also said she wished she had more resources, and that the provincial and federal governments need to offer more help to municipalities. She said the $15 million Quebec announced in the fall to fight homelessness isn’t enough.
“I think Quebec and the Canadian government can do better,” Fournier said. “We hope that Quebec will increase its contribution because $15 million in all the cities of Quebec, it’s not enough of course.”
Experts cautiously welcomed Longueuil’s plan.
“At least there is a plan. At least there is an amount of money,” said Dolly Shinhat, the director-general of Our Harbour, an organization that provides long-term social housing to the English community in the Monteregie. “It’s a three-year plan. I’m curious — will there be more investment in community organizations?
Shinhat says that more money is especially needed in the English community, where resources are scarce.
“It’s really important. English people have mental illness, too; English people are homeless, too,” she said.
She also believes an awareness campaign is a good idea.
“I think raising awareness — (the mayor) called it sensitivity education — is important too so we can understand why these people are homeless and why they cannot find anywhere to go.”
The mayor says the city will start construction on a new social housing complex with more than 80 units in the spring. But she admits solving the crisis will take years.