Montreal's social intervention squad expanding to entire city to address homelessness

The City of Montreal says it will expand its mobile mediation and social intervention team (EMMIS) throughout the metropolis in response to the homelessness crisis.

Montreal Mayor Valerie Plante said Tuesday that although her administration’s ability to address the crisis is limited, the intervention team has become crucial to ensuring safety in the city.

"The housing crisis, mental health issues, rising homelessness, drug addiction, and the cost of living create urgent needs that increasingly have to be addressed in public spaces," Plante said in a press release.

"EMMIS is a proven Montreal innovation and serves as an essential additional tool that we are proud to deploy across the city. It is a concrete response to the homelessness crisis, which requires collective solutions shared among all levels of government."

According to the city, this expansion was made possible through a collaboration between the Social Development Corporation and the Équijustice organization.

Moreover, discussions are underway with a third organization to extend services to the northeast area of the island of Montreal in 2025.

The City of Montreal and Quebec’s Ministry of Public Security provided $50 million in funding until 2028.

In 2025, residents and businesses will benefit from a new service that allows them to contact the EMMIS through the Greater Montreal Reference Centre (211).

The team, created in 2021, consists of social workers who provide immediate, non-urgent social responses in public spaces.

EMMIS now includes 52 social workers deployed across Ville-Marie, Plateau-Mont-Royal, Mercier-Hochelaga-Maisonneuve, and Sud-Ouest boroughs. Since winter 2024, the EMMIS has also been working in the Montreal metro.

In 2023, the EMMIS carried out 15,000 interventions.

"The $25 million allocated for the EMMIS deployment allows the City of Montreal to launch and test an innovative approach in its territory. It is important for us to support municipalities in starting and launching these projects so they can measure their impact on communities before including them in their budgets," added François Bonnardel, the Quebec Minister of Public Security.

However, in a statement, a spokesperson for the official opposition, Ensemble Montreal, criticized the Plante administration's long delay in implementing the service city-wide.

"In addition to the insane wait, the effectiveness of this project is questionable: even if the Social Development Corporation is given the mandate in three additional boroughs, there will be no additional workers," Benoit Langevin said in a statement.

We also deplore the absence of an agreement with an organization to provide the EMMIS service in the boroughs of Montréal-Nord, Saint-Léonard and Rivière-des-Prairies-Pointe-aux-Trembles, where cohabitation issues are on the increase.

Additionally, the official opposition says that it is unrealistic to think that EMMIS will be able, on its own, to remedy the many issues of cohabitation that plague Montrealers.

"Especially as the number of operators planned to answer calls has not been disclosed. In the end, it is once again the most vulnerable who will pay for Projet Montréal's mismanagement."