Issuing more fines to Montreal’s homeless ineffective: researchers

If you live on the streets and have no money – what are you supposed to do when police fine you?

That’s the question in Montreal as more of the city’s homeless receive tickets for various offences, such as loitering, failing to pay a public transit fare, or being drunk in public.

The tickets can rack up.  Some people owe thousands of dollars.

One group of researchers calls the situation a strategy of repression. “One ticket after the next – to try to make these people disappear,” says Marie-Eve Sylvestre.

The researchers did some digging through the City of Montreal’s databases, analyzing more than 69,000 tickets over a 17-year period.

In 1994, fines to the homeless totalled less than $200,000. But in 2010, that figure soared to $1.4 million.

Robert Lavigne of Montreal’s Old Brewery Mission says he has seen the tickets and sides with the researchers – fining the homeless doesn’t help.  It makes it harder for people to get off the streets – when debt is piling up on the backs.

Or in other words, when people are homeless – they don’t pay.

“I mean for (the homeless), their biggest concern is their next meal, or next bed. They don’t care about what’s written on a piece of paper,” says Lavigne.

Even though more tickets are being handed out, barely any of the fines and fees are ever collected.  The researchers stress ticketing makes no sense, considering the court costs, collection agencies, and in some cases, imprisonment.

Another researcher, Pierre Gaudreau, says, “We should invest in social solution, not in repression.”

Mayor Gerald Tremblay said he agreed.  On Wednesday, he announced he’s working on issues like social housing. Tremblay emphasized there can’t be two types of citizens. “Is it acceptable that homeless people can smoke in the Metro, as ordinary people can’t? Is it normal that they can drink alcohol (in public)?”

With more people calling the streets home year after year, solutions are needed. One homeless woman says police are wasting their time with ticketing.

“They know we can’t pay,” she says.

With files from Mike Armstrong