Published at 1:27 am. Updated at 5:00 am.
Since losing his apartment two years ago during a depressive episode following four deaths in his family, Russell has lived sporadically in a tent, including in an alley west of downtown Montreal and under an overpass on the Ville-Marie highway. from where the Ministry of Transport expelled campers last July.
After dismantling his camp, having lost his meager possessions and tired of being disturbed by other homeless people who were sometimes drunk, drugged or had evil intentions, the 65-year-old man, originally from Jamaica, found a small space really well hidden to set up your tent.
So well hidden that he refuses to take us there for fear that the authorities will identify the place and drive him from his sanctuary. The most we can say is that it lives in a tunnel, protected from precipitation and cold.
PHOTO ROBERT SKINNER, THE PRESS
Russell, 65, has lived on the streets since losing his apartment two years ago.
“When the city drives us away, it is difficult to change places every time, we rack our brains to find a new place,” complains Russell, who not only lives outside but is also gradually losing his sight and is currently experiencing it has that he is suffering from cancer.
Last September, he saw another homeless man, former kingpin Kevin White, stabbed to death in the alley where he was camping, an event that traumatized him.
PHOTO ROBERT SKINNER, THE PRESS
People experiencing homelessness are increasingly disguising themselves to avoid being disturbed and asked to leave.
Better disguised
Almost everywhere in Montreal, homeless people are camping in parks, on vacant lots, in alleys, under overpasses and also in abandoned buildings. At regular intervals, municipalities or owners dismantle these camps and clean the locations.
Some are visible to passers-by, but increasingly people experiencing homelessness are camouflage themselves to avoid being disturbed and asked to leave.
This is observed by David Chapman, director of Résilience Montréal, who is concerned about this trend.
PHOTO ROBERT SKINNER, THE PRESS
David Chapman, director of Résilience Montréal
When we dismantle their camps, we are sending them the message: “Better hide!” That is why they are increasingly being hidden in places where they are invisible.
David Chapman, director of Résilience Montréal
But by hiding, homeless people put themselves in danger because no one can help them if something bad happens to them, such as an injury, illness, or drug overdose.
“I am convinced that we will find frozen bodies in abandoned buildings or elsewhere this winter,” says David Chapman. Do we wait until there are deaths to act? »
On Wednesday, Saint-Jérôme police discovered the remains of a man in a tent pitched in a remote forest in the city. According to police, the body had probably been there for several weeks.
On November 10, three people were found unconscious in an abandoned building in Montreal’s Centre-Sud neighborhood, likely due to an opioid overdose. It was an employee of the company that owned the building, a former soap factory now boarded up, who contacted the authorities after discovering the three unconscious people being cared for by Urgences-santé.
Camps everywhere
Near Cabot Square and Résilience Montréal, where the organization distributes food and clothing and provides services to the homeless population, David Chapman shows us some encampments that go unnoticed. Here a tarpaulin stretched between wooden supports, leaning against an abandoned building, there a tent in a small forest behind a fence.
PHOTO ROBERT SKINNER, THE PRESS
By hiding, people experiencing homelessness are putting themselves at risk because no one can help them, community organizations believe.
In another corner of the city, the Centre-Sud district, around ten people are housed under an overpass that spans a railway. The trash-strewn site next to a city garage was the scene of a violent armed attack Thursday that left a homeless man injured.
When La Presse visited a few days earlier, the campers were packing up because police had come the previous week to ask them to leave the site, which belonged to Canadian Pacific – now Canadian Pacific Kansas City (CPKC) – heard.
That morning, three police cars arrived at the scene but left after 20 minutes without officers taking action.
Jennifer, who has been living in the camp with her boyfriend for about three months, simply planned to find a new place to settle in. The couple has a large tent, a generator and equipment for cooking.
“We feel comfortable here, we don’t bother anyone,” says the young woman, who is fleeing emergency shelters because of strict regulations, bedbugs, theft and because couples cannot stay together.
CPKC declined to tell us whether it had asked police to evict the campers from its property.
“CPKC police continue to work with Montreal police to protect public safety and address the issue of an encampment encroaching on railway property near an active rail line,” Terry Cunha, a company spokesman, responded in a written statement Answer .
PHOTO ROBERT SKINNER, THE PRESS
Itinerant people have set up camp in the park next to the La Presse building on Rue Saint-Antoine.
The Ville-Marie district regularly dismantles camps set up on municipal property, such as the park next to the La Presse building on Rue Saint-Antoine. But the campers settle there immediately.
It was impossible to know how much dismantling work city employees are doing and how much this work is costing the city.
Dignity and security
“Let us remember that camps pose a safety risk and that municipal regulations do not allow camping in parks and public spaces. In all cases, the City of Montreal relies on a humane approach to people, with the intervention period allowing them to move and contact aid organizations. When a tent is reported, it is checked whether there is an immediate danger. In this case, the city must intervene very quickly to protect everyone,” writes PR specialist Guillaume Rivest in a written response.
PHOTO PATRICK SANFAÇON, LA PRESS ARCHIVE
Dismantling of a warehouse under the Ville-Marie motorway last July
“The city talks about safety and human dignity, but it is neither dignified nor safe to take people out of their homes when they have nowhere to go,” responds Jérémie Lamarche, community organizer at the network. Helping Single People and Homeless People in Montreal (RAPSIM). “People can’t bring all their stuff with them and are just camping somewhere else where it’s harder for community workers to reach them. »
In order to truly regain his dignity, Russell wants his own apartment. He was on the Office Municipal d’habitation de Montréal’s list to obtain an apartment in HLM, but claims that due to the loss of his phone last summer, he was unable to answer the organism’s call when his turn came, and he therefore missed his chance.
“This is my dream! But now I have to start from scratch,” he regrets.
In Montreal, more than 20,000 people are on the waiting list for social housing.
With Philippe Teisceira-Lessard and Henri Ouellette-Vézina, La Presse
Moncton: Homeless man thrown into garbage truck
A Moncton, New Brunswick man was thrown into a garbage truck this week while trying to shelter from the cold in a dumpster. In a video released Friday by the organization The Humanity Project, we can hear the man screaming and see him keel over as the contents of the dumpster are thrown into the truck.
“When you take away people’s tents, sleeping bags and all their belongings without providing them with safe and adequate shelter, they are forced to sleep in places like dumpsters just to escape the cold,” he said. Promote the organization on their Facebook page. Luckily, the truck driver heard the man’s screams and was able to come to his aid, he said.
A similar event came to a tragic end in April 2020 when the body of 51-year-old Charles Pitre was found in a landfill in Moncton.
Bruno Marcotte, La Presse