For Montreal’s unhoused individuals, the early-descending freezing temperatures and the predicted high-precipitation winter ahead pose fatal risks, including frostbite, hypothermia, and death. Yet, shelters across the city are already struggling at and over capacity. 

Although Mayor Soraya Martinez Ferrada has promised to expand housing and healthcare services for the unhoused, the city’s political and institutional apathy towards long-term sustainable solutions to the housing crisis persists. Such inaction upholds a cycle that denigrates the city’s most vulnerable individuals, sustains housing and healthcare insecurity, and fails to properly ensure that humans live with dignity, support, and security.

In Montreal, shelter space for the unhoused population falls far short of growing demand. There are about 1,800 shelter beds available but an estimated 4,690 unhoused individuals, forcing some shelters to offer chairs for the night instead of beds. Just this week, housing rights advocates voiced concerns about the increasing death rate among the unhoused, which had been rising long before the winter months. The persistent occurrence of preventable deaths of those already most marginalized lays bare the failures of Montreal’s housing and healthcare systems. 

In her campaign, Mayor Ferrada promised to end homeless encampments within four years, claiming that they pose risks to the city’s cleanliness and security. However, just weeks after her election, Quebec’s Transport Ministry issued dozens of eviction notices to individuals living in tents along Notre-Dame Street, giving residents only days to vacate. Ferrada’s strategy of dismantling homeless encampments without first prioritizing housing alternatives for their inhabitants effectively criminalizes the unhoused population for circumstances created and upheld by governmental negligence.

Instead of supporting crisis measures, the government has put time and money into violently destroying encampments, inhumanely stripping individuals of all their belongings, and leaving them without any place to go. In this way, the Ferrada government has chosen to address a major socioeconomic crisis by displacing a population it considers unpalatable, relocating these groups to areas where they will be less visible instead of confronting the systemic factors that lead to homelessness in the first place. 

The housing crisis is just one in a web of interrelated systems which mutually compound an individual’s risk of becoming unhoused. In Montreal, Indigenous and 2SLGBTQIA+ individuals are disproportionately represented in these systems. The over-policing of Indigenous populations, for example, leads to overrepresentation in incarceration, which then leads to a compounded risk of homelessness after release. Health disparities incurred by unhoused 2SLGBTQIA+ individuals bear similarly cyclical effects, as a lack of access to proper gender-affirming care and social services leads to increased prevalence of poor mental health, further entrenching housing insecurity. For women, domestic violence is the leading cause of homelessness, while children who have been involved in the foster care system are also overrepresented among unhoused youth.  

The Montreal municipal government’s support for the homelessness crisis has come largely in the form of seasonal warming centres and temporary housing. While critical for short-term triage, especially in harsh weather, such temporary fixes must be complemented by equally substantiated commitment to sustainable, year-round housing solutions.

The homelessness crisis is not inevitable—it is curated and actively upheld through political apathy, hostile urban design, and governmental policy. However, that also means that governments, lawmakers, and institutions have the agency to reverse this crisis. 

At the municipal level, Montreal must dismantle its hostile public architecture projects and incorporate cultural sensitivity into police training. The Ferrada government must also set aside funding for housing solutions to supplement provincial funding, instead of relying on the perennial good will of local organizations and shelters. At the provincial level, Quebec must hold itself accountable for pursuing long-term solutions to the housing crisis, as well as seeking improvements to social services and healthcare.

Action need not be limited to government bodies. McGill must commit to conducting comprehensive research aimed at benefitting the unhoused population and ensuring representation in data to best inform future policy. 

Above all, Montreal’s unhoused population must be treated with dignity, respect, and support. Mitigating the homelessness crisis must not be a push to meet the low bar of subsistence, but to ensure that every human being has the foundation to survive, and the resources, agency, and respect to thrive.