Montreal city councillors table motion to declare state of emergency on homelessness

A pair of independent Montreal city councillors have tabled a motion to get the city to declare a state of emergency on homelessness next week.

The motion calls on the city to usher in a host of measures including requisitioning private accommodation spaces to shelter the unhoused before winter comes and allocating more resources to shelters.

Craig Sauvé, one of the councillors behind the motion, says Montreal needs to step up to protect the lives of its growing homeless population as shelters scramble to accommodate the city’s unhoused.

“If the state of emergency is declared by City of Montreal, then a committee, a coordination committee, as was done during COVID, would be struck and they would start to flesh out all those details. It’s obviously something that takes coordination, it takes a lot of people. The earlier we start, the more lives we can save,” Said Sauvé.

Community group Resilience Montreal says declaring a state of emergency may help homeless shelters put a roof over more people’s heads and prevent people from dying in the cold.

“There’s a definite increase in the death rate among the homeless population in the last few years, and one of the things that we don’t do in Quebec is keep track of the number of unhoused persons who die every year,” said David Chapman, Executive Director of Resilience Montreal.

” They do this in other places like in Toronto, for example, in Calgary, they have an annual count of unhoused deaths. And so it can be done and it should be done,” added Chapman.

“I know there are overdoses and all, but we don’t want people freezing to death, right? But we already saw that with Rafael Andre. We need to do better,” said Nakuset, Executive Director of Native Women’s Shelter of Montreal.

A City of Montreal spokesperson says other measures are better suited to addressing the problem than declaring a state of emergency, such as building more modular housing units.

If Montreal did back the motion, it would join a growing list of cities across Canada that have declared a state of emergency on homelessness in recent years, including Toronto, Edmonton and Hamilton, Ont.

The STM recently closed the Cabot Square entrance to Atwater metro citing the large number of people experiencing homelessness as the reason.

“So if they’re not going to be in the metros at all, Whether it be, you know, that particular spot at Atwater Metro or any other metro, where are they going to go? I see other places where they’ve removed the seats, like in Peel. You can’t even sit there because they feel like that is just going to deter people from hanging out. But where are they going to go? So, you’re not dealing with the problem. You’re just displacing the problem,” said Nakuset.

“When we start to close public facilities that provide a service to the population, because we don’t know what to do with all of those people that get into the metro only to survive, it seems obvious to me that we have crossed an unacceptable limit in the so called civilized society,” said Serge Sasseville, City Councillor of Ville-Marie Borough.

The motion will be voted on Monday Nov. 18.

“We know by studies, that for every dollar you spend in social housing or supportive housing, you’re saving four or five dollars down the line in support services. It’s a good investment. It’s smart money to spend,” said Sauvé.

“If you don’t have adequate places to put people that are accessible and sufficient and warm, there will be very real consequences and it will be an increase in the death rate among the homeless population,” said Chapman.