Ville-Marie’s war on the homeless

Mario Paquet, target of a law preventing people from walking more than two dogs at once in Ville-Marie; photo by Ben Soo

Under the leadership of mayor Benoît Labonté, Montreal’s downtown borough has done everything it can to push its social problems into the closet. New laws preventing people from being in public squares at night and walking more than two dogs at once are recent attempts to expell the homeless from downtown’s public spaces; panhandling, noise and jaywalking laws are others that are often arbitrarily applied by police to target marginal people.

This might make sense if the borough was also investing heavily in the social programs, charities and shelters that help people get off the street and into safer and more stable surroundings; it would be a stick-and-carrot approach meant to eradicate homelessness once and for all. But, as La Presse’s Michèle Ouimet revealed over the weekend, Ville-Marie appears to have no interest in getting rid of homelessness — just the homeless. Just as it is doing everything it can to push its most vulnerable inhabitants outside the borough, Ville-Marie has consistently failed to offer any serious aid to the many organizations working to fight poverty and homelessness within its own borders.

«Même si on les a souvent sollicités, on n’a rien reçu de la Ville de Montréal, encore moins de l’arrondissement de Ville-Marie. Ils nous félicitent pour notre travail, mais c’est tout.»

C’est ce qu’affirme le père Sylvio Michaud, directeur associé de la Maison du Père, qui accueille 150 sans-abri par nuit. Le refuge est situé au coeur de l’arrondissement de Ville-Marie, boulevard René-Lévesque.

Le maire de Ville-Marie, Benoit Labonté, a visité le refuge pendant la campagne électorale. «Il n’est jamais revenu», souligne le père Michaud.

Les sans-abri prennent souvent le chemin du centre-ville. Parmi eux, de nombreux cas lourds. «Entre 35% et 40% des itinérants éprouvent des problèmes graves de santé mentale, comme la schizophrénie ou les troubles bipolaires», explique Nancy Keas, chef de l’équipe itinérance au Centre de santé et de services sociaux Jeanne-Mance.

(…) Les sans-abri ne sont pas les seuls à avoir besoin d’aide. Ville-Marie abrite plusieurs groupes communautaires, mais le financement est laborieux.

«Nos relations avec l’arrondissement ne sont pas toujours faciles, affirme prudemment Marie-Ève Hébert, directrice de la Corporation de développement économique, qui regroupe près de la moitié des organismes communautaires de Ville-Marie. Plusieurs groupes ne comprennent pas les critères de financement fixés par l’arrondissement.»

Ville-Marie a un budget annuel de 75 millions. Les groupes communautaires ne reçoivent que 380 000$. C’est peu, trop peu.

Being homeless isn’t a choice — it’s usually the result of a mental illness, drug addiction or some other serious but treatable problem. There are ways of dealing with it in the short term (by providing housing and shelter to get people off the streets immediately) and in the long term (by investing in health and social programs). A number of cities across North America have found creative ways of dealing with homelessness. New York is looking to its old flophouses as a way of giving people who would otherwise be homeless a cheap, safe and clean place to live; Calgary is looking to build an apartment tower that will give homeless people a stepping stone between the streets and a home.

Ville-Marie has no such plans. Its leaders seem to think they can legislate homelessness out of existence. In 2006, when the law preventing people from staying in squares after midnight was first passed, police swept through the downtown core, evicting people en masse. But the city’s shelters were already full and no alternative accommodations had been arranged, so the people who had been sleeping in the squares were left with nowhere to go. If this is the kind of approach our downtown borough is taking, how can we expect to ever deal seriously with homelessness?