Mayor Valérie Plante said Montrealers have large hearts, but there is an erosion of the collective goodwill the longer the housing crisis continues.
Montreal Mayor Valérie Plante says Quebec has refused its offer to put in place warming centres for 50 people this winter.
“We proposed sites to take people off the street immediately,” Plante said. “We proposed places for more than 50 people in addition to the 118 places that were already announced by the province.”
She specified that the city has proposed “two or three warming centres, but we were told ‘no’ by the province.”
The city of Montreal is expecting roughly half of that money to be spent on its territory, Plante said. It’s not clear whether the province intends to match the funding to allow for $100 million to be spent.
Plante said Montrealers have large hearts, but there is an erosion of the collective goodwill the longer the crisis continues.
“I am going to continue to speak out, high and loud, to say that we need to find solutions,” she said. “We have to go further and today, I’m calling once again for a (Quebec) plan. I’ve been saying it for two years.”
The plan has to have goals to develop housing and to improve the health-care network to be able to respond to the needs of unhoused people, she said.
She said 17,000 families in Montreal are on a waiting list for social housing, which means they are on the verge of becoming homeless.
“For me, what happened on Monday is a collective failure,” she said. “We can’t say it’s normal live in a tent without water, without heating, without protection. They can be assaulted. If they use a makeshift heater, it can explode. We’ve seen this.
“It’s difficult for Montrealers because we are seeing the faces of people who are homeless, and it hits so many different kinds of people right now,” Plante said. “There are elderly, and lots of youths; we have seen statistics that 30 per cent of the people living in tents are young people, often just coming out of the youth protection system.”