As the evening cold set in, Lindy Trapper and three friends spread a blanket on a platform overlooking the tracks at Villa-Maria Metro, in Montreal’s west end.
Soon after, two intervention workers told them to leave. They were escorted up to the subway entrance, but without any clear options, stayed inside.
“I hang around in the Metro until it closes, and then I have to look for somewhere to sleep,” said Trapper, a Cree man from Mistissini, Que.
When the Metro does close, Trapper said he often spends the night in a storefront entrance, where he can escape the worst of the wind. In the morning, he returns to the Metro.
Similar situations are unfolding across the subway system, where people without a place to stay seek reprieve from the cold and snow.
Reports of disturbances in the Metro system, drug usage and concerns from riders about their safety have all surged since the pandemic.
‘Fall through the cracks’
During a round of consultations on homelessness last week, Société de transport de Montréal (STM) chair Éric Caldwell expressed alarm over the growing problems in the Metro, saying it has become the “overflow unit for the most vulnerable people who fall through the cracks of the social safety net.”
At the same time, he said, the sense of security among public transit users is in sharp decline, making for an “untenable” situation. In a January survey, nearly half of riders said they felt unsafe.
“It can’t continue like this,” Caldwell told the city’s homelessness consultations. “We need to stop considering the Metro as a last-resort shelter.”
Overdoses in the Metro are also up, more than doubling from 22 in 2023 to 47 in 2024. There were 12 in the first month of January.
“We want to maintain an environment of respect, and it’s really hard because sometimes we are close to losing control between the different types of clients between drug users and homeless people,” Jocelyn Latulippe, the STM’s director of security, told CBC News recently.
“We need to have more support.”
Last year, STM workers removed more than 12,000 people from the Metro at the end of the night. Latulippe said they try to find those people a shelter, but there isn’t always space.
More people experiencing homelessness are seeking help during this frigid, snow-filled stretch. But shelters are struggling with staffing shortages.
Montreal, like many other Canadian cities, has seen a dramatic rise in homelessness since the pandemic. Between 2018 and 2022, the number of people experiencing homelessness across the province doubled to roughly 10,000.
Homeless shelters are regularly stretched to capacity, leading to more encampments and, particularly in the bitter winter months, more people inside the Metro.
“The people that are there are not there because they want to be,” James Hughes, head of the Old Brewery Mission, the city’s largest shelter, said in an interview. “They are there trying to survive.”
Root causes
The Montreal consultations, which resume this week, are mandated to explore questions of cohabitation, such as how shelters and resources for homeless people can be integrated into neighbourhoods.
Advocates argue that focus misses the point, and the root causes of homelessness must be addressed.
“What needs to be done is the government needs to put its big boy pants on and start investing in social housing, and community housing, and start offering solutions that aren’t temporary solutions,” said Nicholas Harvest, an intervention worker with a Pointe-Saint-Charles housing rights group, who was at the hearings last week.
At the National Assembly, the Coalition Avenir Québec government has come under criticism.
Guillaume Cliche-Rivard, a Québec Solidaire MNA and critic on homelessness issues, called out the ruling party for “refusing to recognize the extent of the crisis.”
Cliche-Rivard tabled a motion saying it “is unacceptable that the CAQ refuses to assume its responsibilities and refuses to open emergency shelters.”
As the city grapples with growing homelessness and drug use issues, Montreal’s transit authority says it’s intervening in more than 70 cases every day on average of what it calls problematic behaviour or incivility, while overdose incidents are doubling every year.
In a statement, the office of Quebec’s social services minister said the facts reported by the STM “show that the issue of cohabitation is the main source of concern for many Montrealers.”
It said the city will get more than $23 million from a deal with the federal government to address homelessness over the next two years.
Hughes, for his part, struck an optimistic tone and urged Montrealers to be understanding, saying additional resources and projects were on the way to help.
“Let’s just hang in there,” he said.
