Montreal will not agree to stop dismantling homeless encampments, despite new report

Maura Forrest · The Canadian Press

· Posted: Jul 10, 2025 2:43 PM EDT | Last Updated: July 10

The City of Montreal won't committedness to halt dismantling stateless encampments, successful spite of a proposal from a survey it commissioned to find solutions to the increasing occupation of homelessness successful the city.

City officials connected Thursday said taking down encampments is simply a "last resort" but astatine times it's indispensable to support the information of radical successful and astir the sites.

"The encampments are a spot similar the histrion that hides the forest," said Robert Beaudry, the city's enforcement committee subordinate liable for warring homelessness, during a quality league astatine metropolis hall.

"What is the forest? ... It's the glaring deficiency of resources successful Montreal, successful Quebec, for radical experiencing chronic homelessness."

His comments followed the work of a caller study that decries a deficiency of enactment successful the combat against homelessness and calls connected the metropolis to boost resources for assemblage organizations moving with the unhoused.

The astir 300-page report, published Thursday by Montreal's nationalist consultation office, says the metropolis should halt dismantling stateless encampments until it develops a argumentation governing erstwhile and however they tin beryllium taken down.

The study follows nationalist consultations that Montreal announced past year. City officials grappled with the rising fig of radical experiencing homelessness amid nationalist absorption toward services specified arsenic shelters and supervised injection sites.

Philippe Bourke, president of Montreal's nationalist consultation office, said dismantling encampments simply pushes the occupation of chronic homelessness retired of sight, without resolving it.

"There are problems of societal cohabitation astir the camps, and the dismantling of the camps creates different problems of societal cohabitation," he told reporters Thursday.

The study says the metropolis should alternatively make safer surviving conditions successful the encampments by improving entree to drinking water, toilets, discarded postulation and electricity.

'Blame game' betwixt antithetic levels of government

Beaudry pushed backmost connected that recommendation, saying specified attempts person not gone good successful different cities. He pointed to Vancouver, which announced past autumn it would adjacent its lone sanctioned stateless encampment owed to wellness and information risks. Earlier successful the year, a cleanup unit had removed much than 90,000 kilograms of debris and different worldly from the site.

Beaudry said Montreal alternatively aims to amended services for its unhoused population, though helium did not supply numbers. The study recovered that assemblage organizations moving to assistance those experiencing homelessness are "seriously lacking the resources to bash so."

"We are committed to adding resources," Beaudry said. "We besides expect our partners, the national government, the provincial government, to determination successful the aforesaid absorption arsenic us."

Montreal Mayor Valerie Plante said the study shows a deficiency of resources is astatine the bosom of the problem.

"As a city, we volition proceed our efforts and spell adjacent further," she said connected societal media. "But we can't bash it alone. We person to play arsenic a team, with Quebec."

WATCH | Report urges Montreal to accommodate care for radical experiencing homelessness: 

The study recovered determination is simply a "major governance deficit" in the combat against homelessness successful Montreal and the remainder of the province, and a deficiency of clarity astir the responsibilities of antithetic governments.

Bourke said determination is simply a "blame game" betwixt antithetic levels of authorities erstwhile it comes to addressing homelessness.

"It greatly reduces the capableness for action," helium said. "There are assets losses, determination is burnout, and we cannot execute the objectives we acceptable if we don't code this."

City welcomes immoderate recommendations

The report's archetypal proposal is that the metropolis should formally state that Montrealers experiencing homelessness are citizens adjacent to those who are housed — a symbolic measurement that Beaudry called a "no-brainer."

He said metropolis assembly volition marque an authoritative declaration during its adjacent meeting.

The consultation bureau besides wants the metropolis to inquire wellness authorities to found much supervised drug-consumption services successful Montreal.

"The constricted availability of this benignant of assets successful Montreal is detrimental to nationalist wellness and societal coexistence," the study says.

According to the report, determination were 4,690 visibly unhoused radical successful Montreal successful 2022, up from 3,149 successful 2018. However, Bourke said the authoritative numbers don't relationship for "hidden homelessness," including radical who unrecorded successful their cars oregon who enactment temporarily with household members oregon friends.

In 2022, astir 60 per cent of unhoused radical said they suffered from intelligence wellness problems, and 45 per cent said they had a aesculapian information oregon carnal illness.

Indigenous radical accounted for 13 per cent of the visibly unhoused population, contempt making up conscionable 0.6 per cent of Montreal's wide population.