Tent village outside Old Montreal hotel signals urgent need for shelter, housing in winter

For the past two weeks, a small tent village has been present in Parc de la Presse, a green space behind Hotel Place d’Armes in Old Montreal. This development follows the province of Quebec reportedly throwing $9.7-million at homeless shelters to create more space for beds. But here in Montreal, shelters are still overflowing, and beds are still scarce. A temporary shelter in Verdun has been opened, but due to its remoteness, unhoused people are having a hard time accessing it. 

As a result, there are now people sleeping in tarps and jerry-rigged boxes in the snow. When asked, a representative of the Place d’Armes Hotel admitted that it has more than 14 available rooms, just sitting empty while people by the building are camped in cardboard shelters cobbled together into structures meant to keep out the winter freeze. Nighttime temperatures this week are dipping to -26 C with the windchill.

When posting via Instagram about the baffling situation of unhoused people sleeping at the foot of a half-empty four-star hotel, Montreal Mayor Valérie Plante was tagged and contacted for feedback, in the hopes that an emergency solution would be reached for the people entrenched in a snow bank. At the time of this writing, she has not responded.

Is this the kind of city, the kind of community, that we wish to live in? A community where human beings sleep in snowbanks outside luxury hotels? Maybe it’s time to start coming up with some solutions that see human rights actually achieved. The city needs to do more than add shelter beds in temporary spaces that kick people back out in the early morning. This city needs affordable, permanent housing. It is a basic right. Without it, people cannot be human. ■

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