Quebec homeless population count in Montreal

More than 1,000 volunteers are walking the streets of Montreal Tuesday to count and interview people experiencing homelessness.

The operation is part of a province-wide homelessness count across 16 regions to estimate the homeless population in Quebec.

“We’re trying to have the most complete portrait of homelessness in Montreal and in Quebec because those data are crucial to being able to plan the different actions that we’re going to have to put forward,” said Élaine Polflit, assistant director of urban partnerships for the CIUSSS Centre-Sud-de-l‘île-de-Montréal.

“It gives us an idea quantitatively of how many people are homeless, but as importantly, it tells us where people are coming from,” explained James Hughes, president and CEO for the Old Brewery Mission. “It tells us their stories. It tells us what their needs are, where they’re living geographically.”

This is the fourth time a count like this has been organized. The first was in 2018 and the most recent was last year.

The April 23, 2024, count found there were 9,307 homeless people across those regions, of which nearly 42 per cent were in Montreal.

Between the years 2022 and 2024, a 15 per cent increase was observed, equivalent to an average annual increase of 10 per cent.

Since 2018, the homeless population in Quebec has increased about eight to 10 per cent a year.

“We need to do these types of studies. They’re imperfect though because we’ll count tonight how many people are homeless, but it’ll be a minimum number. It’ll be the number of people we’re able to count,” said Hughes, adding, “there’s so many people that are homeless that are invisible intentionally or unintentionally that we won’t find, we won’t be able to count.”

Volunteers took to the streets of Montreal just after 7 p.m. and approached people with a questionnaire.

“Just general questions about why they’re out there and their health and things like that,” explained Pascale Lagacé, a volunteer for the count, about the questions being asked to people on the streets.

The goal of the count is to better assess and understand the needs of people experiencing homelessness and to adapt the services offered to them.

“It’s been very useful to know what’s happening on the field and the best example I would give you is in 2022 when we saw that 57 per cent of the people with homelessness had mental issues. We started increasing programs to support homelessness and mental health,” said Lionel Carmant, Quebec’s Social Services Minister, before the start of the homeless count.

The results of this count in Montreal and across Quebec may not be made public by the Ministry of Health and Social Services until next year, as the last two reports took about 11 months before they were published.

“We’ve seen a 15 per cent increase in sheltered homelessness, so given that we know that we’re likely to see a similar kind of increase in unsheltered homelessness, but the real challenge is what do we do with that?” asked Sam Watts, CEO and executive director of Welcome Hall Mission.

“What we want to really be doing with that is finding new ways of doing prevention upstream and downstream ensuring that housing resources become available quickly,”

–With files from The Canadian Press