When the afternoon cold was established, Lindy Trapper and three friends extended a blanket on a platform with a view to the tracks in Villa-Maria Metro, in the West End of Montreal.
Shortly after, two intervention workers told them to leave. They were escorted at the entrance of the subway, but without any clear option, they stayed inside.
“I stay in the subway until it closes, and then I have to look for a place to sleep,” said Trapper, a man of believe of Mistissini, who.
When the subway closes, Trapper said he often spends the night in an entrance of the store, where he can escape the worst of the wind. In the morning, he returns to the subway.
Similar situations develop through the Metro system, where people without a place to remain in the summary of cold and snow.
The reports of alterations in the metropolitan system, the use of drugs and the concerns of passengers about their safety have increased from the pandemic.
‘Fall through cracks’
During a round of homeless people last week, Montréal Transport Société (STM) The president, Éric Caldwell, expressed alarm for the growing problems in the subway, saying that it has become the “overflow unit for the most vulnerable people who fall in the cracks of the Social Security Network.”
At the same time, he said, the feeling of security among public transport users is in a strong decline, which is a “unsustainable” situation. In a January survey, almost half of the riders said they felt insecure.
“You can’t continue like this,” Caldwell said the consultations of homeless people from the city. “We need to stop considering the subway as a last resort shelter.”
Overdose in the subway are also up, more than double 22 in 2023 to 47 in 2024. There were 12 in the first month of January.
“We want to maintain an atmosphere of respect, and it is really difficult because sometimes we are close to losing control between different types of customers between drug users and homeless people,” said Jocelyn Latulippe, STM Security Director, a CBC News recently.
“We need to have more support.”
Last year, STM workers eliminated more than 12,000 people from the subway at the end of the night. Latulippe said they try to find these people a shelter, but there is not always space.
More people who experience the lack of housing are looking for help during this frozen and snow -filled section. But shelters are fighting with the shortage of personnel.
Montreal, like many other Canadian cities, has seen a dramatic increase in the lack of housing from the pandemic. Between 2018 and 2022, the number of people who experienced homeless people throughout the province doubled at approximately 10,000.
The shelters for homeless people stretch regularly to their capacity, which leads to more camps and, particularly in the bitter winter months, more people inside the subway.
“The people who are there are not there because they want to be,” said James Hughes, head of the Old Brewery Mission, the largest refuge in the city, in an interview. “They are trying to survive.”
Root causes
Montreal consultations, which resume this week, have the mandate to explore questions of coexistence, such as shelters and resources for homeless people can be integrated into neighborhoods.
The defenders argue that the approach loses the point, and the root causes of the lack of housing must be addressed.
“What needs to be done is that the government needs to put their big child pants and start investing in social homes and community housing, and starting to offer solutions that are not temporary solutions,” said Nicholas Harvest, an intervention worker with a Point -Saint -Charles Housing Rights Group, which was at the audiences last week.
In the National Assembly, the Government of the COALIÓN Avenir Québec has been criticized.
Guillaume Click-Rivard, a solid of Québec MNA and a critic on issues of housing, called the ruling party for “refusing to recognize the scope of the crisis.”
Cliché-Rivard presented a motion that says that “it is unacceptable that the CAQ refuses to assume its responsibilities and refuses to open emergency shelters.”
As the city dealt with the growing problems of using housing and drug use, the Montreal Transit Authority says that it intervenes in more than 70 cases every day on average of what calls behavior or problematic incivility , while overdose incidents double each year.
In a statement, the Office of the Quebec Social Services said that the facts informed by the STM “show that the issue of cohabitation is the main source of concern for many Montrealers.”
He said that the city will obtain more than $ 23 million from an agreement with the federal government to address the lack of housing in the next two years.
Hughes, meanwhile, reached an optimistic tone and urged Montrealers to be understanding, saying that additional resources and projects were on their way to help.
“Let’s hose there,” he said.
