$5M donation to create 18-unit residence for homeless in Lachine

Construction will soon begin in Lachine to build an 18-unit residence for homeless Montrealers or those at risk of ending up on the street.

And it’s all thanks to a generous $5-million donation from the Tenaquip Foundation.

“We’re at the point where we’re ready to start putting the ground together. So yeah, we’re pretty excited about it,” said Michael Fitzgerald, the executive director at Tenaquip.

An excavator sat on the property this week – a sign of the work to come.

“What we loved about this was the land was twice as big as the other ones we looked at,” Fitzgerald told CityNews. “So originally we thought of an 11-unit building. With this land, we could do 18 units and have gardens and common areas for the residents. So it kind of became pretty exciting.”

The hope is to provide a tangible solution to the housing crisis in Montreal.

“The need is huge,” Fitzgerald said. “The homelessness is getting larger and larger all the time, not just in Montreal but across Canada. And we need to find a way not just to put a band-aid on the problem and give them a hot meal in a bed, but to integrate them back into society.

“So this type of housing to me is the most important there is because every year we’re going to bring new people in. We’re going to get them jobs. We’re going to get them back into the mainstream.”

The Tenaquip Foundation was created in 2006 as the wish of late humanitarian Ken Reed. Now his children, including his daughter Joanne Reed, carry the torch.

“We were always taught to give back and to make this world a better place from my father and my mother, and that’s what we think it does,” Reed said.

Old Brewery Mission to manage residence

Montreal’s Old Brewery Mission will run the residence. President and CEO James Hughes says projects like these are a big part of the long-term solution for the unhoused.

“It takes an organization like Tenaquip, like the Reed family, to be imaginative and creative and innovative and really support the new kinds of ideas that we need to take on the new forms of homelessness that we’re seeing,” Hughes said.

“The Place Tenaquip will be 18 apartments, of which 13 will be smaller units studios for single people, men and women – it’ll be a mixed project. And five will be three-and-a-halfs, which will provide a basis for couples. We’re seeing more and more need for answers for couples who are experiencing homelessness.”

While Reed says “18 units might not seem huge,” she adds “every little bit counts.”

Hughes estimates people stay in those types of units for about a year or two.

“So over the course of a decade, you’re going to be helping hundreds of people,” he added.

Fitzgerald credited the Old Brewery Mission in making the project possible.

“(It) has done such a great job organizing and managing that I think once it’s completed, and they got people in, they’re going to continue to do a great job,” Fitzgerald said. “It’s like the old saying, you give a man a fish, he’ll eat for a day. Teach a man to fish, he’ll eat forever. And that’s kind of what we’re hoping to do here.”