Homelessness: a humanitarian crisis in Montreal
The number of homeless people has skyrocketed over the past two years in the Quebec metropolis,
and they are virtually abandoned. How to end the drama?
and they are virtually abandoned. How to end the drama?
his is the first day of the rest of Shane Hughes' life.
He piles his clothes in garbage bags, gives up his tent and leaves the makeshift camp he has shared for months with about twenty other homeless people under an interchange on the Ville-Marie Expressway in Westmount. After living outside for most of the pandemic, Shane's girlfriend Lydia found them a studio in Montreal's west end.
This isn't the first time Shane Hughes, in his mid-thirties, has left the streets. But this time, things are going to be different, he swears.
Shane is going to find work and Lydia is hopeful of getting a job at the Round House, a café in Cabot Square, in front of the Atwater subway. For years, this square, across from the children's hospital and a boarding house, has been the gathering place for Inuit to take their children south for treatment. Now that the Montreal Children's Hospital has moved to the West Island and
the boarding house has closed, only the park remains.
Lydia is determined to get her children back. Everyone at Resilience Montreal, the day shelter they frequent, encourages them.
Nico, who also lives under the elevated highway, is happy to inherit a tent, but even more so to see his friend Shane leave for a better place. A few weeks earlier, Nico's dog, Tommy, had to scare away a stranger who had come to the camp armed with an axe.
[Editor's note: Nico passed away in the summer of 2022].
Shane Hughes and his friend Nico, who died a few weeks after the making of this report.
When Lydia joins him outside the shelter, with tears in his eyes, he exclaims, "We're going home, baby!"
It was a sweltering afternoon in July 2021. The sun shone through a gap in the overpass,
the cries of cicadas mingled with the sounds of the highway.
I had never seen Shane so happy. I met him five years ago while reporting on homelessness. For as long as I can remember, he has slept either on the street or in prison. But that day was a new beginning.
Six months later, he was back behind bars.
***
Shane's story is the story of homelessness in Montreal.
More than 3,000 people were living on the streets on the island when the last count was in 2018, gathering in shelters in Cabot Square, outside Berri-UQAM metro or at the south end of Mount Royal in the Milton-Parc neighbourhood. The pandemic has not helped, on the contrary. The results of the 2022 count will be known in the fall of 2023, but on the ground, shelter workers tell me that there would be hundreds more homeless people than in 2018. Maybe even more than 1,000. One in 10 is Aboriginal, although Aboriginal people represent less than 1% of Montreal's population. Many of them came from Nunavik to escape a housing crisis that prevented them from living safely and peacefully on the land they have always called home.
Municipal, provincial and federal elected officials are aware of the crisis, but continue to rely on the same makeshift solutions that they know are ineffective, denounces the ombudsman of Montreal, Nadine Mailloux, in ascathing reportpublished in May 2022. "[There are] real people experiencing homelessness and intolerable human distress," she writes.
The ombudsman notes Montreal's "glaring lack of planning" in the face of predictable emergencies, such as the arrival of winter. The City's response is little more than an "expensive stopgap" designed to prevent people from dying, without addressing the root causes of the "humanitarian crisis in the heart of the city."
Homelessness is a three-dimensional problem. The city is taking care of the land with resources provided by the Department of Health and Social Services, which has repeatedly ignored calls for help from the mayor's office, it reads. The solution, recognized by the majority of experts, is subsidized housing. Most of these grants come from Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation (CMHC). Ottawa is therefore also concerned.
The $21 million envelope granted by Ottawa in emergency to accommodate homeless people in two hotels in downtown Montreal at the height of the pandemic may not be renewed at the end of 2022. "Will federal COVID funds be reallocated to help the homeless in the long term? We don't know," says Josefina Blanco, who is responsible for homelessness at Montreal City Council. "We need the federal and provincial governments to be at the table with us. We need massive investment to address homelessness. »
Mayor Valérie Plante met with First Nations chiefs in May 2022 and asked them to pressure the federal government to renew its funding for the PAQ-2 shelter, which Quebec Native Projects (QAP) opened at the beginning of the pandemic in Chinatown. If it closes its doors, dozens of people will find themselves on the street. Once again.
Samuel Watts, CEO of Welcome Hall Mission, was instrumental in the opening, in the summer of 2021, of a shelter inside the former Hôtel-Dieu Hospital in the Plateau-Mont-Royal neighbourhood. Considering that three people froze to death on the streets of Montreal the following winter, it is no exaggeration to say that the Mission saved lives. Quebec City's funding will make it possible to travel to the winter of 2022, but who knows what will happen next.
"The employees, the schedules, the meals and everything that goes around running a shelter, you have to be able to plan for that," says Samuel Watts, whose Welcome Hall Mission has been helping Montrealers in need since 1892. "It's really frustrating to have no idea what [the government] will decide. If we were a smaller, less experienced organization, it would be disastrous. »
The Legault government announced in 2021 a five-year, $280 million plan to tackle homelessness in Quebec. Its budget includes rent subsidies for young people who leave the Youth Protection Department (DYP) system, as well as for drug treatment centres and prisons. Ten million dollars are also earmarked for women living on the streets. James Hughes, president and CEO of the Old Brewery Mission, which has been helping the homeless for more than 125 years, called the budget the largest to date to address homelessness. But he also stressed that it was insufficient. The City of Montreal has increased its annual budget for homelessness from three to six million dollars.
If all this has an effect, it is difficult to see.
Last summer, at Welcome Hall Mission, some 2,500 people benefited from free groceries each week, compared to 2,000 before the pandemic. There were 4,000 in September, according to Samuel Watts. "I'm optimistic, but it's not easy to be optimistic these days."
***
Stéphane strolls in the middle of Sainte-Catherine Street without worrying about morning traffic. He sees a sweeper and raises his palms in front of the vehicle, as if to order it to stop. The vehicle slows down. "Do you have a cigarette?" he asks the driver, who shakes his head. "Benfuck, you're fired!" says Stéphane happily, pretending to return the truck with a wave of his hand.
Stéphane, in his forties, has no address or even a place to settle every night, but this street corner, corner of Sainte-Catherine and Atwater, is his. If you drive on Sainte-Catherine during rush hour, you will see him in front of the Resilience Montreal day centre, along with a hundred of his peers. "Some haven't eaten since yesterday afternoon," he says. They eat when the shelter is open.
When it closes, they are left to fend for themselves. »
From 7 a.m., a line begins to form, an hour before the opening. Among the first to arrive were a man and a woman sleeping nearby, under an emergency staircase, with a tarpaulin as a ceiling and cardboard as a floor. The couple are waiting for their French toast and fried ham fresh out of the pan. The smell of sugar and grease escaping through the side door of the building softens for a moment
the harsh contours of this area of the west of downtown.
The queue is longer in front of Resilience Montreal since the City closed the heated tent in Cabot Square in April 2022. The latter was open to everyone, but mostly frequented by homeless Aboriginal people in the neighbourhood. Many women, some pregnant, had a safe place to nap and eat rather than sleep in fear on an empty stomach.
Now that the heated tent is gone, they have to improvise.
"My friends started going east [to Berri Street]. It's hard there," says "Marlene", who came from a Cree village for a week to visit her friends in Cabot Square. She refuses to let me write her real name. "When you spend too much time in Berri, you change. There are harder drugs, more people, more traffickers, more crime, more violence. »
In her report, Ombudsman Nadine Mailloux describes Montreal's response to homelessness as "seasonal" and "temporary." The crisis, she says, requires access to permanent resources.
Organizations like Resilience Montreal have to apply and reapply for financial assistance every year, which prevents them from implementing long-term strategies. They can help half a dozen people find a roof over their heads every month,
but it rarely comes with the support needed to keep it.
Which brings us back to the heated tent. It provided food and shelter in an area where hundreds of people sleep under the stars every night. Without it, people have to find another place to retreat. The City is working with Resilience Montreal to purchase a building and install a permanent overnight shelter, but this could take months or even years.
At the beginning of summer, Cabot Square is quieter without the heated tent. Marlene sits with her friends as night falls on Montreal. Preachers hand out pamphlets, couples picnic and homeless people watch the sun descend behind the office towers overlooking the Atwater subway. "Jesus Christ loves you," says one man, explaining how to get to his Bible group meetings.
For Marlene's friends, who frequent the Chez Doris women's day shelter, not far away, the apparent calm is deceptive. The homelessness crisis is as serious as ever, they point out, it is simply less visible without the tent.
It took lobbying from local Indigenous leaders, Innu Senator Michèle Audette and a substantial donation from the Mohawks of Kahnawake to get it in place in 2021. They fought to have a nightly hotstop downtown after an Innu man was found dead outside a shelter on Park Avenue in January 2021. Raphaël André had not been able to sleep there because an outbreak of COVID-19 forced the closure of the place. Desperately looking for a warm place for a few hours, he took refuge in a portable toilet. That's where he spent his last hours.
The death of Raphaël André sparked outrage in the country. Following this, the City of Montreal installed emergency beds at the Percival-Molson football stadium, where the Alouettes play. It also authorized the heated tent at Cabot Square, which is run by Indigenous street workers. The Mohawk community of Kahnawake provided security guards and food. The place was named the Raphaël André tent.
Silent protest in memory of Elisapee Pootoogook, an Inuit homeless man who died in 2021 on a construction site near Westmount. (Photo: Christopher Curtis)The snow melted, but the tent remained open. "It was not supposed to be, but it clearly met a need," says a source close to Valérie Plante, who requested anonymity to speak freely on this thorny subject since the mayor announced, in September 2020, that the number of homeless people in Montreal had doubled because of the pandemic, an estimate that has been questioned by organizations on the ground.
"The number of homeless people has skyrocketed during the pandemic," the source said. I do not have exact numbers, but it is not unreasonable to think that the number of people sleeping outside has gone from 3,000 to 4,000 or more. Shelters are struggling to keep up. »
Nevertheless, street workers, as well as Nakuset, director of the Native Women's Shelter of Montreal, say they had to insist with the mayor of Montreal several times to prevent the tent from being dismantled. The place seemed to attract homeless people from all over the city. And more people in the park has led to more fights, more 911 calls, as well as a reminder to residents
of nearby luxury condos that homelessness exists west of downtown.
The general anger aroused by the death of Raphaël André did not last. Life has resumed in the alleys and street corners around the square.
***
Among the people queuing for breakfast in front of Resilience Montreal in early summer 2022,
some are discussing tents and other equipment to get through the season.
"We don't encourage people to camp, but there aren't many options anymore," says David Chapman, Director of Resilience Montreal.
Every week, street worker Ronnie Laporte posts an up-to-date list of shelters at the entrance to Resilience. "The problem is that people are told they're all full for the night," says Ronnie Laporte, who worked at the rest stop's security. "It's hard not to feel like you're abandoning them. We always do our best, but we don't decide the rules. »
"Grace" used to sleep in the makeshift camp under the Atwater Avenue overpass, the same one where Shane slept. But one afternoon in January 2021, she returned to her tent to discover that it had been razed by a Ministry of Transportation cleaning crew. Since then, she has managed to find a studio through the Chez Doris women's centre.
Almost every night, people knock on her window to ask if they can sleep at her house. Most of the time, Grace agrees. "I know what it's like to be outside. I can't always say yes. Sometimes I just need to sleep. And I don't want to have problems with my landlord. But when you've been a woman on the street, you can't say no to other women looking for a safe place. »
***
Isaw Shane for the first time since his release from prison in the line in front of Resilience. As soon as our eyes met, he hugged me.
"I spent five months in Bordeaux.
"I've heard it's a real rat hole," I replied.
"It's not so bad. I think I caught COVID, but the other inmates told me to shut up or we would all be locked up 23 hours a day. They prefer to try their luck with the virus rather than be in quarantine.
When Shane and Lydia came off the streets in 2021, the chances were high that things wouldn't go the way they hoped.
Both have histories of substance abuse and have survived years of abuse, which began as children. The pain they carry makes it harder to manage their emotions. It also activates the part of their brain that perceives danger, so they are in an almost permanent state of alert
When two vulnerable people live under the same roof without any mental health support, it rarely ends well. According to Shane, Lydia relapsed and they started arguing. One night, the situation escalated, someone called the cops and Shane ended up in jail.
"It's not enough to give someone the keys to an apartment," says Samuel Watts of Welcome Hall Mission. To help someone find a roof over your head, you need three things: the person, a rent supplement and an available apartment. Bringing these three elements together at the same time is almost like winning the lottery. »
After, says the CEO, a support service is necessary to help the person keep his housing, preserve his mental health and get off the street in the long term. "You work with three levels of governance: you have to make sure that health and social services, which come under Quebec City, talk about housing, which is a federal responsibility, and they have to coordinate with the City. Try to get them on the same page. It's not easy. And even when they all agree, the government machine remains slow. »
***
Shane is not looking for excuses.
He knows he screwed up. And that he is too old to run the streets. He swears this time it will be different. "I'm going to the YMCA later this week for job training, I'm staying with my mom, I'm not talking to my ex, I have to get my life back on track. I no longer have the strength to fight. »
For as long as I can remember, Shane has been saying that. And every time, I think he's trying to change. I believe it again this time.
There is goodness in him. I remember seeing someone rob a homeless elderly woman, and Shane yell at the thief until he returns his money to the lady. If they had come to the blows, Shane would not have been tall, considering that he barely exceeds 1 m 50 and does not even weigh 60 kilos. Intensity is often his best weapon.
I also know that he struggles to control his fits of rage. When I ask him where he thinks this anger comes from, Shane alludes to his youth in foster care and some bad memories of his time in the military. Usually, the conversation ends there.
He still has moments of lucidity about himself.
"Chris, remember when I said I had no strength to fight anymore? I don't know if that's true. Maybe I have some left. »
He piles his clothes in garbage bags, gives up his tent and leaves the makeshift camp he has shared for months with about twenty other homeless people under an interchange on the Ville-Marie Expressway in Westmount. After living outside for most of the pandemic, Shane's girlfriend Lydia found them a studio in Montreal's west end.
This isn't the first time Shane Hughes, in his mid-thirties, has left the streets. But this time, things are going to be different, he swears.
Shane is going to find work and Lydia is hopeful of getting a job at the Round House, a café in Cabot Square, in front of the Atwater subway. For years, this square, across from the children's hospital and a boarding house, has been the gathering place for Inuit to take their children south for treatment. Now that the Montreal Children's Hospital has moved to the West Island and
the boarding house has closed, only the park remains.
Lydia is determined to get her children back. Everyone at Resilience Montreal, the day shelter they frequent, encourages them.
Nico, who also lives under the elevated highway, is happy to inherit a tent, but even more so to see his friend Shane leave for a better place. A few weeks earlier, Nico's dog, Tommy, had to scare away a stranger who had come to the camp armed with an axe.
[Editor's note: Nico passed away in the summer of 2022].
Shane Hughes and his friend Nico, who died a few weeks after the making of this report.
When Lydia joins him outside the shelter, with tears in his eyes, he exclaims, "We're going home, baby!"
It was a sweltering afternoon in July 2021. The sun shone through a gap in the overpass,
the cries of cicadas mingled with the sounds of the highway.
I had never seen Shane so happy. I met him five years ago while reporting on homelessness. For as long as I can remember, he has slept either on the street or in prison. But that day was a new beginning.
Six months later, he was back behind bars.
***
Shane's story is the story of homelessness in Montreal.
More than 3,000 people were living on the streets on the island when the last count was in 2018, gathering in shelters in Cabot Square, outside Berri-UQAM metro or at the south end of Mount Royal in the Milton-Parc neighbourhood. The pandemic has not helped, on the contrary. The results of the 2022 count will be known in the fall of 2023, but on the ground, shelter workers tell me that there would be hundreds more homeless people than in 2018. Maybe even more than 1,000. One in 10 is Aboriginal, although Aboriginal people represent less than 1% of Montreal's population. Many of them came from Nunavik to escape a housing crisis that prevented them from living safely and peacefully on the land they have always called home.
Municipal, provincial and federal elected officials are aware of the crisis, but continue to rely on the same makeshift solutions that they know are ineffective, denounces the ombudsman of Montreal, Nadine Mailloux, in ascathing reportpublished in May 2022. "[There are] real people experiencing homelessness and intolerable human distress," she writes.
The ombudsman notes Montreal's "glaring lack of planning" in the face of predictable emergencies, such as the arrival of winter. The City's response is little more than an "expensive stopgap" designed to prevent people from dying, without addressing the root causes of the "humanitarian crisis in the heart of the city."
Homelessness is a three-dimensional problem. The city is taking care of the land with resources provided by the Department of Health and Social Services, which has repeatedly ignored calls for help from the mayor's office, it reads. The solution, recognized by the majority of experts, is subsidized housing. Most of these grants come from Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation (CMHC). Ottawa is therefore also concerned.
The $21 million envelope granted by Ottawa in emergency to accommodate homeless people in two hotels in downtown Montreal at the height of the pandemic may not be renewed at the end of 2022. "Will federal COVID funds be reallocated to help the homeless in the long term? We don't know," says Josefina Blanco, who is responsible for homelessness at Montreal City Council. "We need the federal and provincial governments to be at the table with us. We need massive investment to address homelessness. »
Mayor Valérie Plante met with First Nations chiefs in May 2022 and asked them to pressure the federal government to renew its funding for the PAQ-2 shelter, which Quebec Native Projects (QAP) opened at the beginning of the pandemic in Chinatown. If it closes its doors, dozens of people will find themselves on the street. Once again.
Samuel Watts, CEO of Welcome Hall Mission, was instrumental in the opening, in the summer of 2021, of a shelter inside the former Hôtel-Dieu Hospital in the Plateau-Mont-Royal neighbourhood. Considering that three people froze to death on the streets of Montreal the following winter, it is no exaggeration to say that the Mission saved lives. Quebec City's funding will make it possible to travel to the winter of 2022, but who knows what will happen next.
"The employees, the schedules, the meals and everything that goes around running a shelter, you have to be able to plan for that," says Samuel Watts, whose Welcome Hall Mission has been helping Montrealers in need since 1892. "It's really frustrating to have no idea what [the government] will decide. If we were a smaller, less experienced organization, it would be disastrous. »
The Legault government announced in 2021 a five-year, $280 million plan to tackle homelessness in Quebec. Its budget includes rent subsidies for young people who leave the Youth Protection Department (DYP) system, as well as for drug treatment centres and prisons. Ten million dollars are also earmarked for women living on the streets. James Hughes, president and CEO of the Old Brewery Mission, which has been helping the homeless for more than 125 years, called the budget the largest to date to address homelessness. But he also stressed that it was insufficient. The City of Montreal has increased its annual budget for homelessness from three to six million dollars.
If all this has an effect, it is difficult to see.
Last summer, at Welcome Hall Mission, some 2,500 people benefited from free groceries each week, compared to 2,000 before the pandemic. There were 4,000 in September, according to Samuel Watts. "I'm optimistic, but it's not easy to be optimistic these days."
***
Stéphane strolls in the middle of Sainte-Catherine Street without worrying about morning traffic. He sees a sweeper and raises his palms in front of the vehicle, as if to order it to stop. The vehicle slows down. "Do you have a cigarette?" he asks the driver, who shakes his head. "Benfuck, you're fired!" says Stéphane happily, pretending to return the truck with a wave of his hand.
Stéphane, in his forties, has no address or even a place to settle every night, but this street corner, corner of Sainte-Catherine and Atwater, is his. If you drive on Sainte-Catherine during rush hour, you will see him in front of the Resilience Montreal day centre, along with a hundred of his peers. "Some haven't eaten since yesterday afternoon," he says. They eat when the shelter is open.
When it closes, they are left to fend for themselves. »
From 7 a.m., a line begins to form, an hour before the opening. Among the first to arrive were a man and a woman sleeping nearby, under an emergency staircase, with a tarpaulin as a ceiling and cardboard as a floor. The couple are waiting for their French toast and fried ham fresh out of the pan. The smell of sugar and grease escaping through the side door of the building softens for a moment
the harsh contours of this area of the west of downtown.
The queue is longer in front of Resilience Montreal since the City closed the heated tent in Cabot Square in April 2022. The latter was open to everyone, but mostly frequented by homeless Aboriginal people in the neighbourhood. Many women, some pregnant, had a safe place to nap and eat rather than sleep in fear on an empty stomach.
Now that the heated tent is gone, they have to improvise.
"My friends started going east [to Berri Street]. It's hard there," says "Marlene", who came from a Cree village for a week to visit her friends in Cabot Square. She refuses to let me write her real name. "When you spend too much time in Berri, you change. There are harder drugs, more people, more traffickers, more crime, more violence. »
In her report, Ombudsman Nadine Mailloux describes Montreal's response to homelessness as "seasonal" and "temporary." The crisis, she says, requires access to permanent resources.
Organizations like Resilience Montreal have to apply and reapply for financial assistance every year, which prevents them from implementing long-term strategies. They can help half a dozen people find a roof over their heads every month,
but it rarely comes with the support needed to keep it.
Which brings us back to the heated tent. It provided food and shelter in an area where hundreds of people sleep under the stars every night. Without it, people have to find another place to retreat. The City is working with Resilience Montreal to purchase a building and install a permanent overnight shelter, but this could take months or even years.
At the beginning of summer, Cabot Square is quieter without the heated tent. Marlene sits with her friends as night falls on Montreal. Preachers hand out pamphlets, couples picnic and homeless people watch the sun descend behind the office towers overlooking the Atwater subway. "Jesus Christ loves you," says one man, explaining how to get to his Bible group meetings.
For Marlene's friends, who frequent the Chez Doris women's day shelter, not far away, the apparent calm is deceptive. The homelessness crisis is as serious as ever, they point out, it is simply less visible without the tent.
It took lobbying from local Indigenous leaders, Innu Senator Michèle Audette and a substantial donation from the Mohawks of Kahnawake to get it in place in 2021. They fought to have a nightly hotstop downtown after an Innu man was found dead outside a shelter on Park Avenue in January 2021. Raphaël André had not been able to sleep there because an outbreak of COVID-19 forced the closure of the place. Desperately looking for a warm place for a few hours, he took refuge in a portable toilet. That's where he spent his last hours.
The death of Raphaël André sparked outrage in the country. Following this, the City of Montreal installed emergency beds at the Percival-Molson football stadium, where the Alouettes play. It also authorized the heated tent at Cabot Square, which is run by Indigenous street workers. The Mohawk community of Kahnawake provided security guards and food. The place was named the Raphaël André tent.
Silent protest in memory of Elisapee Pootoogook, an Inuit homeless man who died in 2021 on a construction site near Westmount. (Photo: Christopher Curtis)The snow melted, but the tent remained open. "It was not supposed to be, but it clearly met a need," says a source close to Valérie Plante, who requested anonymity to speak freely on this thorny subject since the mayor announced, in September 2020, that the number of homeless people in Montreal had doubled because of the pandemic, an estimate that has been questioned by organizations on the ground.
"The number of homeless people has skyrocketed during the pandemic," the source said. I do not have exact numbers, but it is not unreasonable to think that the number of people sleeping outside has gone from 3,000 to 4,000 or more. Shelters are struggling to keep up. »
Nevertheless, street workers, as well as Nakuset, director of the Native Women's Shelter of Montreal, say they had to insist with the mayor of Montreal several times to prevent the tent from being dismantled. The place seemed to attract homeless people from all over the city. And more people in the park has led to more fights, more 911 calls, as well as a reminder to residents
of nearby luxury condos that homelessness exists west of downtown.
The general anger aroused by the death of Raphaël André did not last. Life has resumed in the alleys and street corners around the square.
***
Among the people queuing for breakfast in front of Resilience Montreal in early summer 2022,
some are discussing tents and other equipment to get through the season.
"We don't encourage people to camp, but there aren't many options anymore," says David Chapman, Director of Resilience Montreal.
Every week, street worker Ronnie Laporte posts an up-to-date list of shelters at the entrance to Resilience. "The problem is that people are told they're all full for the night," says Ronnie Laporte, who worked at the rest stop's security. "It's hard not to feel like you're abandoning them. We always do our best, but we don't decide the rules. »
"Grace" used to sleep in the makeshift camp under the Atwater Avenue overpass, the same one where Shane slept. But one afternoon in January 2021, she returned to her tent to discover that it had been razed by a Ministry of Transportation cleaning crew. Since then, she has managed to find a studio through the Chez Doris women's centre.
Almost every night, people knock on her window to ask if they can sleep at her house. Most of the time, Grace agrees. "I know what it's like to be outside. I can't always say yes. Sometimes I just need to sleep. And I don't want to have problems with my landlord. But when you've been a woman on the street, you can't say no to other women looking for a safe place. »
***
Isaw Shane for the first time since his release from prison in the line in front of Resilience. As soon as our eyes met, he hugged me.
"I spent five months in Bordeaux.
"I've heard it's a real rat hole," I replied.
"It's not so bad. I think I caught COVID, but the other inmates told me to shut up or we would all be locked up 23 hours a day. They prefer to try their luck with the virus rather than be in quarantine.
When Shane and Lydia came off the streets in 2021, the chances were high that things wouldn't go the way they hoped.
Both have histories of substance abuse and have survived years of abuse, which began as children. The pain they carry makes it harder to manage their emotions. It also activates the part of their brain that perceives danger, so they are in an almost permanent state of alert
When two vulnerable people live under the same roof without any mental health support, it rarely ends well. According to Shane, Lydia relapsed and they started arguing. One night, the situation escalated, someone called the cops and Shane ended up in jail.
"It's not enough to give someone the keys to an apartment," says Samuel Watts of Welcome Hall Mission. To help someone find a roof over your head, you need three things: the person, a rent supplement and an available apartment. Bringing these three elements together at the same time is almost like winning the lottery. »
After, says the CEO, a support service is necessary to help the person keep his housing, preserve his mental health and get off the street in the long term. "You work with three levels of governance: you have to make sure that health and social services, which come under Quebec City, talk about housing, which is a federal responsibility, and they have to coordinate with the City. Try to get them on the same page. It's not easy. And even when they all agree, the government machine remains slow. »
***
Shane is not looking for excuses.
He knows he screwed up. And that he is too old to run the streets. He swears this time it will be different. "I'm going to the YMCA later this week for job training, I'm staying with my mom, I'm not talking to my ex, I have to get my life back on track. I no longer have the strength to fight. »
For as long as I can remember, Shane has been saying that. And every time, I think he's trying to change. I believe it again this time.
There is goodness in him. I remember seeing someone rob a homeless elderly woman, and Shane yell at the thief until he returns his money to the lady. If they had come to the blows, Shane would not have been tall, considering that he barely exceeds 1 m 50 and does not even weigh 60 kilos. Intensity is often his best weapon.
I also know that he struggles to control his fits of rage. When I ask him where he thinks this anger comes from, Shane alludes to his youth in foster care and some bad memories of his time in the military. Usually, the conversation ends there.
He still has moments of lucidity about himself.
"Chris, remember when I said I had no strength to fight anymore? I don't know if that's true. Maybe I have some left. »
