Quebec Solidaire (QS) is calling on the Legault government to take urgent action to use empty or underused church spaces to combat the homelessness crisis in Montreal.
“It’s unacceptable to think that we’re kicking people out of the metro for the night and that there’s nothing else, that there’s no other place for them. It just can’t be,” said QS Saint-Henri—Saint-Anne MNA Guillaume Cliche-Rivard, standing on the steps of Sacred Heart of Jesus church in the Hochelaga-Maisonneuve district, accompanied by a small delegation of his party’s MNAs.
‘François Legault doesn’t give a damn about Montreal’
QS co-spokesperson Ruba Ghazal was extremely harsh on the premier: “The homelessness crisis we are experiencing shows that the CAQ has once again abandoned Montrealers. François Legault doesn’t give a damn about Montreal,” she said in a tone as icy as the Wednesday morning air.
QS claims that the diocese of Montreal has been open to the possibility of the government renting out empty spaces, such as church basements, church halls and others, to set up temporary shelters or warming huts.
Ghazal addressed the premier directly, saying that the minister responsible, Lionel Carmant, “is doing what he can, but he’s clearly not the one holding the purse strings.”
“François Legault must stop looking the other way on this crisis,” she said, calling for a mandate to be given to the CISSSs and CIUSSSs to take charge of renting the space required and providing the support staff needed for this often delicate clientele.
No time to cut
Aware of the financial constraints imposed on health-care institutions, Ghazal pointed out that not only the seriousness of homelessness, but also the current economic situation, require an approach other than that fighting the deficit.
“With the recession we are heading into with Trump’s tariffs, what we are saying to the CAQ government is to put away its chainsaw of austerity in our public services, to stop cutting. The government should abandon its request to Santé Québec to cut $1.5 billion,” said Ghazal.
“It’s going to affect services, it’s already affecting services and it’s clear that at the moment, with the homelessness crisis, it’s not going to resolve the situation. This is not the time to be dealing with the deficit.”
“In 2021, I went to get vaccinated in the basement of a church that had been rented out for this purpose by the CIUSSS,” said Cliche-Rivard. “The CISSSs and CIUSSSs are capable of doing this, and they need to organize it. We must have these spaces for our citizens.”
The MNA said that “it costs less to deal with the homelessness crisis than not to deal with it,” pointing out that a study carried out last autumn estimated the annual cost to the City of Montreal of one person on the street at $75,000.
But beyond that, he said, homelessness is now occupying Montreal’s space to an extent that is beyond what is acceptable.
“I took the metro with my three-and-a-half-year-old son. He asked me: ‘How come there’s a man sleeping in the metro?’” he said. “How come it’s up to the Société de transport de Montréal to manage this at the moment?”
Cohabitation issues
While he acknowledged that setting up places to accommodate the homeless in churches will inevitably raise issues of cohabitation, he puts forward a hypothesis that some citizens who have experienced these issues would be very tempted to contest.
“I’m not worried about ‘not in my backyard.’ Montrealers and Quebecers are open-minded and conscientious. They know what we’re going through and they know we can’t just sit back and do nothing,” said Cliche-Rivard.
He is not ruling out the idea of taking this quest outside the metropolis: “If there is openness to the proposal and if we see that things are moving, it’s obvious that after that we’ll go knocking on the door in Quebec City, we’ll knock on the door in Sherbrooke, Trois-Rivières and elsewhere so that we have proposals that work.”
Of course, the Solidaire MNAs also laid great stress on the urgent need to build affordable housing, rooming houses and social housing, repeating that the worrying increase in homelessness is a direct result of the housing crisis: “One third of people experiencing homelessness are doing so because they have been evicted from their homes.”
This report by The Canadian Press was first published in French on March 12, 2025.
