The La halte du coin shelter, around which a camp had developed in recent weeks in Longueuil, will be relocated by August. Between worried residents and homeless people calling for help, Mayor Catherine Fournier warns that resources are bursting at the seams and struggling to meet needs.
“It won’t change anything. It’s just a plaster on the wound, it’s not even a stitch,” says François, a street worker whom La Presse met at the camp.
A little earlier in the day, Monday, the mayor of Longueuil announced that La stope du coin would be relocated.
Opened in the Notre-Dame-de-Grâces church in the midst of a pandemic in spring 2020, the organization welcomes around 35 people in need daily.
In recent months, a camp of homeless people has been set up near the church and continues to grow every day, while work has begun to deliver a housing complex with some 80 social housing units. in motion near the location. “It started with a few tents at the beginning of the year. Now it’s almost a village,” describes a mother of two children, met after classes in front of a school located on the corner of the street.
She says that the incidents increased, even syringes being found in the schoolyard.
Police surveillance has been increased and several arrests have been made in recent days.
For their part, the campers met by La Presse deplore that the situation is so tense. Assane, who has pitched his tent near the church for a month and a half, explains that for him, the troubles with the neighborhood are the work of a few individuals struggling with addiction and mental health problems. “I often hear ‘all homeless people are animals’. This makes me angry, but what do you want me to do? », he says.
“I am sending this message to people from Montreal who might be thinking of coming to seek help or support from us in Longueuil. We are full, we cannot take more,” argued Mayor Catherine Fournier, announcing the news during a press scrum.
The local stop will be moved to the Jeanne-Dufresnoy Center, about one kilometer from the current location. “It was the furthest municipal building you could find from a school. We turned over all the stones so much that we even thought about demobilizing an entire arena,” she admitted.
Several campers pointed out that this will only move the problem elsewhere. “There’s no one who’s here because they feel like it. There are even more of them outside than inside [the church],” says François.
A priori, the local stopover will retain the same capacity after its relocation. In the absence of additional places, campers told us that they will probably stay where they are.
“The mayor, it shows that she is in good faith and that she does the best with what she has,” indicates Pat Dupuis, who is also a street worker. He emphasizes being aware that to open buildings that would accommodate more people, “it takes insurance, subsidies… But could we, just, be able to? », he says.
The general director of La halte du coin, Pierre Rousseau, remains cautious when asked about an increase in the capacity of the resource. “We could do more […], but even if we had more places, we wonder if people would still be there, outside, with needs. It’s so hard to measure,” he said.
“We will pay attention to the camps,” promised the mayor, adding that she is aware that they are set up “when we don’t have places in the resources.” From the start, she added, “it was already quite clear that the stopover could not remain in the sector in the long term.” “We knew that there was already an issue of social cohabitation, with the presence of a school next door.”
All this comes as in Montreal, two neighbors of two large homeless shelters went to court last week to receive compensation of at least $25,000 each for their inconveniences. The requests filed in the Superior Court concern residents in the vicinity of Hôtel-Dieu, rue Saint-Urbain, and The Open Door shelter, in Milton-Parc.
In the Laurentians, the Itinerant Legal Clinic, an organization defending the rights of the homeless, is challenging in court a Saint-Jérôme by-law aimed at prohibiting the establishment of camps for homeless people in public spaces.
