Montreal mobile health clinic helps get homeless people out of tents, into apartments

Old Brewery Mission says its mobile health clinic has intervened 2,691 times to help homeless people in the community in its first year.

The homelessness problem in Montreal can seem pretty bleak, but the Old Brewery Mission is doing some good in dealing with the issue.

A mobile health clinic that reaches out to unhoused people in encampments and metro stations is celebrating its first anniversary. The mission says the resource has helped people almost 3,000 times in the past year.

“We actually call it our little miracle,” said Mila Alexova, service co-ordinator at the Old Brewery Mission.

The mobile clinic is a Sprinter van equipped with a full medical examination room and a space to sit down and chat.

For a year now it has been reaching out to people experiencing homelessness. Not everyone will come to a traditional shelter, so five days per week between 9 a.m. and 5 p.m. the clinic visits encampments, metro stations and other places where people need help.

“I think it’s one of the greatest ideas they’ve come up with,” said a man named Yianni, a client of the Old Brewery Mission who did not want to give his last name.

The clinic helps out 180 people per month, in partnership with local on-the-ground organizations. The goal is to get people off the streets and into housing.

“It’s to get to know the people that are living in the camps and living in the parks and living under the bridges and in ways we’ve never been able to before,” said James Hughes, the president and CEO of the Old Brewery Mission.