Workers helping the homeless in Montreal feel powerless as crisis deepens

As temperatures drop in Montreal, homeless shelters are overcrowded and warming stations -- furnished with chairs, not beds -- are at full capacity.

Social workers on the front lines of homelessness in Montreal say they feel increasingly powerless as more people find themselves forced to live in tents during the winter.

Stéphanie Lareau has worked with homeless people in Montreal for the past 20 years. Normally, the tents begin to disappear by December, but this year is different, she said.

“This is going to be the first year for me that there are so many of them, and that there aren’t many places to go. By August, I was calling shelters and they were full every day. That never used to happen before,” said Lareau.

As temperatures drop in Montreal, homeless shelters are overcrowded and warming stations — furnished with chairs, not beds — are at full capacity. Unhoused people wander around subway stations, while others sleep standing up in 24-hour restaurants. Many are pitching tents to survive the winter.

The situation has already proved deadly. On Dec. 15, a 55-year-old homeless man was found dead in a Montreal park. Authorities believe he may have died of hypothermia.

Alison Meighen-Maclean, who has worked with homeless people for the past decade at the regional health authority in east-end Montreal, said people urgently need roofs over their heads. The warming stations the city has set up this year aren’t addressing the need because they are only designed to keep people indoors for a short period of time, she said.

In early December, the Quebec government said it had housed 1,000 of the province’s homeless people — a population that stood at about 10,000, as of 2022. A new count of unhoused people in Quebec is scheduled for January 2025.

Quebec Social Services Minister Lionel Carmant said organizations supporting homeless people were behind the apparent reduction. He also credited a government program that provides mental health services while helping people find housing.