The stigma and exclusion experienced by people suffering from homelessness and drug addiction are very real. But Montrealers have also expressed valid concerns.
The heritage building isn’t the only thing now standing in sharp contrast to the shiny new métro entrance. Behind it, past the parking lot spruced up by blue-collar workers in anticipation of the opening, is a small, wooded area that’s long served as an encampment site for the unhoused. The once messy, grimy area containing tarps, tents and random items collected over time by its residents is now razed, trees cut and all items removed, looking desolate and bare. Shopping carts were neatly arranged side by side, each covered with a tarp and containing bits and pieces of people’s lives.
“Thank God it’s cleaned up,” someone exclaimed on a St-Henri Facebook page, yet I couldn’t help but feel uneasy about what this transformation of a “problem area” might mean for those who were sheltering in it.
Few issues elicit as many mixed reactions as homelessness, and I don’t envy politicians who have to straddle that fine line between reassuring skittish constituents and finding solutions.
In the meantime, if you find yourself upset by encampments, take it out on successive governments that have failed to address the root causes of homelessness and provide permanent and adequate housing for those in need. This is a collective failure, and we can’t just make it disappear.
Toula Drimonis is a Montreal journalist and the author of We, the Others: Allophones, Immigrants, and Belonging in Canada.