Montreal aims to keep emergency shelter spaces open year-round

Montreal wants to move away from “seasonal” homelessness strategies and instead convert its temporary, winter-only resources to be available year-round, according to a Thursday press release.

In partnership with eight community organizations, Plante is asking the Quebec government to extend emergency measures such as temporary shelters. The city has given itself an “urgent” deadline of March 31 to ensure that shelter spaces are converted or extended past the winter.

“To get out of the summer-winter logic, we need a concerted strategy, thought out over the medium-long term,” said Montreal Mayor Valerie Plante.

City Council will debate a motion Feb. 21 calling on Quebec to make these changes.

The city also wants to invest in social housing, meaning permanent housing that is lower-cost because it’s owned by nonprofit structures like co-ops, or by the city.

And it wants to increase funding for “mediation and social intervention in public spaces,” the release says, meaning meeting the homeless where they are, before they find shelter.

To do all that, it’s doubling its annual budget on homelessness, from $3 million to $6 million, with a $24-million, four-year plan

“Community organizations and social workers are on the front line to support and accompany homeless people in our communities. They are essential and must be recognized,” said Josefina Blanco, a councillor in Rosemont-Petite Patrie and the member of the Executive Committee responsible for issues around homelessness.

The news comes after community organizations in Montreal pleaded for a funding bump, saying their services are stretched incredibly thin.

The city is also putting more money into a project that was meant to be temporary: the Mobile Mediation and Social Intervention Team (ÉMMIS), “created in the fall of 2021 in the downtown area,” meant to use social workers to “help defuse potentially conflicting situations” and to support the vulnerable.

It’s extending the service outside of downtown and for a period of five years, at a cost of $3.5 million per year for each of the five years.

That funding level is necessary “in order to hire 31 employees to work in the 19 boroughs of the metropolis,” the city said.

Homelessness in the city has also been on the public radar this winter, in particular, after two deaths in a row of people who suffered exposure while trying to sleep outdoors overnight.