Though a homeless encampment was taken down, many tents remain in Montreal area

There are no firm numbers and no real studies, but Montrealers are talking about seeing homeless tents suddenly appearing across the city, including in the suburbs.

On Thursday morning, a homeless encampment was dismantled in Rosemont after Canadian Pacific Railway (CPKC) officials moved in early to break up the encampment near some tracks.

CPKC issued warnings to vacate the area and said it, "regularly works with local law enforcement agencies and other stakeholders to remove trespassers on railroad property and near an active rail line to protect the safety of the public."

It's not the only site where tents are popping up.

Eric Gervais has been living in a tent in a residential area of Lachine for several weeks.

"I have a lot of problems fnding an apartment and a stable living situation," he said.

Gervais admits he was evicted from his last apartment and that he found another one, but it is undergoing major renovations.

He has nowhere to go.

"I'm not supposed to be here," he said. "But I don't have a choice."

Lachine borough mayor Maja Vodanovic said the prevelance of tents is concerning to see and that it's not getting any better.

"There's more and more people, people that are coming from elsewhere," she said.

The borough is aware of Gervais's situation and will try to help him and others in similar situations.

"We try to give them resources," said Vodanovic. "There's places that they could go to, but they need to be willing to do so. So far, we've had success. People do kind of move and decide to go somewhere else."

Welcome Hall Mission CEO Sam Watts said tent cities are a relatively new problem for Montreal, as opposed to cities in the west like Vancouver, Nanaimo and Victoria.

"Montreal has largely been sheltered from this sort of visible homelessness, the kind of which we're seeing right now," he said. "We can do much better than that. There are hundreds of boarded up apartment buildings in Montreal that could be relatively quickly turned around and turned into useful apartments, and we could begin addressing the challenge of homelessness rather quickly."

For Gervais, he said he will live in his tent in Lachine until he finds an affordable apartment.