Montreal homeless can take refuge in métro stations

MONTREAL — As the frigid winter days set in, homeless people in Montreal are once again being invited to take refuge in the city’s subway stations.

Philippe Schnobb, the head of the city’s transit commission, says that while many cities remove homeless people from train and subway stations, the Société de transport de Montréal takes a different approach.

“In Montreal, it’s a very different situation,” he said in an interview. “Homeless people are allowed in the [métro stations]. And with our partnerships … we have a group of people who can intervene, we have specialists who can take care of them, talk with them, give them some services if they need.”

For the last five years, the transit agency has teamed up with social organizations to offer services to the homeless at several subway stations. These include sending social workers to several stations and offering a shuttle service to shelters once the transit system shuts down for the night.

Community workers, including some who were formerly homeless, can send people to mobile health clinics or work with them on finding a place to stay, Schnobb said.

Schnobb said there have been about 3,500 “interventions” with homeless people this year, up from just more than 400, when the program started.

He said the approach, which essentially transforms the métro system into “the biggest day centre in the city,” goes beyond what many other cities are doing and could serve as a model for others in the future.

Representatives from Calgary and Toronto said neither city has specific policies on allowing homeless people to stay in their train or subway stations.

Calgary sends peace officers to check on their welfare and “attempt to get them to a care facility within Calgary if needed, especially if the weather is cold,” city spokeswoman Sherri Zickefoose wrote in an email.

In Edmonton, there’s a policy of keeping light rail stations open all night long when the temperature dips below a certain temperature in order to give people a warm place to sleep, a city spokesman said.

Schnobb said it’s impossible in Montreal to leave the métro system open all night because of construction and the need to perform maintenance.

He said that’s why the shuttle, run by the city’s Old Brewery Mission, a major resource centre for the city’s homeless, ensures people aren’t simply kicked onto the street.

“[The shuttle] is sent to pick up the homeless people in the station to make sure they are brought to a shelter. But if they don’t want to go to a shelter, they have everything they need to stay outside in the night,” he said.

Last week, the City of Montreal announced it was investing $778,000 to help its homeless population this winter season. Their measures include hiring outreach workers, providing funding to the shuttle service and opening beds at emergency shelters.

Despite the outreach efforts, too many homeless people in the subway are still being ticketed for minor infractions, according to the director of a legal clinic that helps them.

Bernard St-Jacques said homeless people regularly get tickets for offences such as loitering, drinking in public or not paying subway fares. While he commends the transit commission for its actions, he said the approach needs to go beyond the homeless to sensitize employees and transit users to the realities facing homeless people.

St-Jacques said he believes that if more people knew about the outreach efforts, they would be less likely to call authorities to lodge complaints against the homeless.

“They’re saying: ‘We’re [enabling] these people rather than [rehabilitating] them.’ Well, I don’t agree, we’re still [rehabiliating] them,” he said in an interview.

“But, if we showed people how we are [rehabilitating] people, that we’re trying to find other solutions, maybe we’d lower the number of complaints and irritations in a general way.”