The Montreal public transport network is adopting a policy that forces people within its subway system to circulate and not take until the weather is heated at the end of April.
There will also be a greater police presence in the Montréal Transport Société Network (STM) and a closure of several areas where people tend to seek refuge.
The announcement, made on Thursday, follows a round of consultations about the lack of housing last month, when the president of STM, Éric Caldwell, said alarm about the growing problems in the Metro, saying that it has become the “unity of overflow for the most vulnerable people who fall through the cracks of the Social Security network.”
But as soon as STM measures were announced, people’s defenders did not have a government agency that pushed the problem.
Annie Savage, the director of the Résau d’Aide aid personnes seules et (Rhapsim), a group that helps people not made, said that organizations such as them and their workers are “overwhelmed by the scope” of the lack of housing in the city.
“We have to act because we have to ask ourselves: ‘The people who are moving, even if it is done in a way that is accompanied, that there is well intentional, a lack of judgment and legal consequences, what are we going to offer them?'”
Savage said that the answer to that question is at this time is “nothing”, because all resources are already beyond capacity.
She and others are asking the province to invest in long and short term solutions.
Caldwell, of the STM, said in February that the feeling of security among public transport users is in a strong decline, which makes it a “unsustainable” situation. In a January survey, almost half of the riders said they felt insecure.
In a press release, the mayor of Montreal, Valérie, said that the employees of the Traffic Agency could no longer assume the responsibility of being in the first line of crisis in addition to their work to transport people and maintain the infrastructure of the network.
The growing number of people who seek refuge in stations have expressed concerns among subway users. The STM is temporarily instituting measures to discourage people from persisting and sleeping in the stations.
He said that the city would prolong the opening of its heating centers so that people seeking heat in the subway could go there.
The city is also creating a “coordination cell” between the STM, the Montreal Police, the city and the Department of Public Health.
“Its objective is to strengthen the alternatives available to accompany vulnerable people to places better adapted to their needs,” said the press release.
The agency has identified nine subway stations where it will reduce the public space until April 30 to discourage people to persist, including the closure of four of its tickets.
“Problems include cleaning, the presence of criminal groups, meetings and drug use,” said the statement.
QS asks Legault to see the crisis for itself in Montreal
Québec Solideire, Ruba Ghazal, also asked Prime Minister François Legault to do more.
“It is extremely sad. There will be people who will be evicted, but at the same time, I find it hard to blame the STM, because it is not their responsibility to deal with the public crisis of the lack of housing,” Ghazal said on Radio-Canada’s’s’s’s Tout a matin Thursday morning before the measures were announced.
“Let the Caq government assume responsibility. It depends on it to take care of social services, the lack of housing and resolve this public health crisis,” Ghazal said, adding that he was asking Legault to come to Montreal to see for himself the extension of the crisis.
In a statement, the Minister of Provincial Social Services, Lionel Carmant, said that the province had signed an agreement with Ottawa to finance almost $ 50 million in homeless services in Quebec, of which $ 24 million would go to the city of Montreal for two years.
“We completely understand the feelings of insecurity of the subway passengers, where cohabitation is a challenge that affects many people,” said Carmant. “We know that housing needs are crucial and that community organizations operating shelters are doing an exceptional and essential job in this situation.”
Québec Solidare proposed on Wednesday to convert the basements of the church into shelters to address the lack of space and resources for homeless people in the city.
Benoit Langevin, the homeless people critic for the opposition party as a They will increase the frequency of votes for people not exceeded for 24 hours.
“If additional measures are not implemented immediately, it is inevitable that the problems observed in the Metro spread in other parts of public spaces, creating new voltage sources,” Lagevin said in a statement sent by email.
