Montreal police are carrying out an operation to dismantle sections of a homeless encampment on Notre-Dame Street East near the city’s downtown core.
Last month, Quebec’s Transport Ministry issued eviction notices to the people who had been living in tents near Morgan Park in the Mercier–Hochelaga-Maisonneuve borough. The Quebec government owns that stretch of land.
Initially, the people living there were given until Nov. 21 to leave.
The province has cited fire hazards and unsanitary conditions as the reasons to dismantle the encampment.
That deadline was then extended to today.
In an interview with CBC, Montreal police chief Fady Dagher said the operation has been going smoothly so far.
“There’s some resistance, but there’s no violence,” Dagher told CBC Montreal Daybreak host Sean Henry.
“When a person is staying exactly where they are for so many months and so many weeks and you ask them to move … for sure, they’re not going to be happy.”
‘A survival situation in an urban environment’
Rhys Buhl, an organizer with Refus Local, a group that has advocated for unhoused campers, spoke to Daybreak while standing at the encampment and watching the operation unfold.
At around 7:40 a.m., she said there were about 50 police officers on site who formed a perimeter around the camp and there was at least one loader truck and a garbage truck.
“I am currently watching the residents’ tents and their personal effects being thrown into the garbage and being cleared away,” she said.
Later during the interview, she said she saw officers holding their batons and described their approach as violent.
As for the concerns about fire hazards and unsanitary conditions, Buhl said she and her group have been at the site regularly in the last few weeks and said the campers were doing the best they could with what they had.
“These are people that are in a survival situation in an urban environment,” she said, adding the city should’ve provided resources to mitigate those risks.
“The campers, they all know each other and they help each other out. These are extremely organized people that are able to put themselves into a situation where they have the resources in this encampment that they need to survive.”
Her group is expected to hold a news conference later this morning at Morgan Park to denounce the City of Montreal and the Quebec government’s actions.
Rent supplements to tackle homelessness
When it comes to finding a solution for the homeless people at the encampment site, Welcome Hall Mission CEO Sam Watts says it’s important to avoid “the two extremes.” On one hand, he doesn’t believe that outdoor encampments should be given the resources to become safer and sustainable.
But he also doesn’t like seeing heavy machinery being brought in to dismantle the living space of vulnerable people.
“I think that as a people here in Montreal, we are much more compassionate than that, and we need to seek out and finding those solutions,” said Watts, adding that the City of Montreal and provincial health authorities shouldn’t have been surprised by what was happening at the encampment site.
The Complexe Desjardins mall in downtown Montreal has been playing the song in its garage and stairwells to deter what they call unwelcome guests. It’s a move that has drawn criticism from advocates for unhoused people as well as the city.
Watts said with shelter space being a “temporary pit stop” and social housing taking years to build, he says there needs to be creative solutions to help people find permanent housing and protect those at risk of becoming homeless.
He said rent supplements to help people afford rising rents are part of that solution.
“We’ve got to keep people who are housed currently, but precariously housed, in their place. Because if they are falling into homelessness, than the entries become more than the exits,” he said.
“Our goal is to help people get back in housing as quickly as possible. It’s not to run big emergency facilities.”
Transports Québec says it’s concerned about fire hazards and unsanitary conditions. It says it will dismantle some of the tents on Notre-Dame Street East if people don’t leave by the deadline.
