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The Ricochet Centre in Pierrefonds-Roxboro is being forced to close its doors temporarily after its lease expires at the end of May. It was the only shelter on Montreal’s West Island.

“Never did I think that I would have to look at the beneficiaries in their face and tell them that they’re not going to have a place to feel safe and secure. And that was just gut-wrenching,” said Caterina Modica-Amore, program and projects coordinator at Ricochet.

After three years, and four lease extensions, they’re searching for a new space, but have come up empty.

“With the city, with the borough, as soon as I got the news, we met and did another tour to look at what’s available. We found a vacant, well, the city found a vacant building, but we learned on May 21 that it was too contaminated to be suitable to operate. So we’re May 30 right now and we’re closed,” explained Tania Charron, executive director of Ricochet.

The only homeless shelter in the entire West Island of Montreal is now closed and the Ricochet shelter is looking for a temporary home until its new space opens in January.

So, what happens to the people who depend on the shelter?

Clients and staff have known this day was coming for two months and had hoped the relocation committee made up of city and provincial partners would find a site but they didn't.

The shelter is now closed and 50 more people are on the streets.

They found a temporary space to set up while their new building was being renovated, but that plan came crumbling down in recent weeks upon the discovery that the new structure was too contaminated to move in.

By the end of May, the shelter had to close its doors, with nowhere to go as it scrambled to find a new space.

Tania Charron, executive director of Rocochet, said her team, the borough and the City of Montreal had been working to find a new temporary place before the end of the lease for months. They finally thought they had a safe plan when the city offered up one of its vacant buildings until the news of its contamination.

Sachant que tout est à recommencer pour la clientèle qui se retrouve devant rien, les intervenants leur ont préparé des trousses de survie. Ils ont distribué cette semaine une cinquantaine de sacs à dos, de matelas de sol, de sacs de couchage, des couvertures, de la nourriture non périssable, une tente et 12 billets d’autobus.

«C’est un échec de devoir regarder une cinquantaine de personnes dans les yeux, de leur donner une tente et de leur dire: excuse-moi, il n’y a pas d’autre solution», a déclaré au TVA Nouvelles la directrice générale du refuge, Tania Charron.

«Concrètement, le Ricochet, c’était deux programmes: d’abord, 24 lits d’urgence, puis un programme de réinsertion sociale avec 24 places 24/7 pour aider les personnes. Nous, ce qu’on veut, c’est donner l’opportunité de rebondir aux gens», explique Tania Charron.

West Island's Ricochet emergency shelter forced to close

Its 50 residents are out on the streets with emergency kits but nowhere to go.

he Ricochet homeless centre that operated in the West Island for 3½ years, providing emergency shelter and transitional housing for 50 clients, closed its doors Friday.

Roughly 50 residents, half in the long-term transitional housing unit and the other half in the emergency overnight shelter, were forced to leave the premises. Ricochet gave emergency kits to residents with nowhere to go that included sleeping bags, sleeping pads, tents and backpacks.

Last fall, Charron and her team with the support of the Pierrefonds–Roxboro borough and the city of Montreal scured a building that will only become available in January 2025 after major renovations.

At the end of April, the team identified another building, only to find out it was too severely contaminated for use.

"We're now May 29 and we have nowhere to go," said Charron.

In a statement, Robert Beaudry, the executive committee member responsible for homelessness, said the city is meeting with Quebec's social services minister today to try and find a solution to Ricochet's lack of space.

Instead of wasting a billion dollars on a useless roof, why not just leave it without a roof?

After all, the "Big Owe" spent the first 11 years with it's roof in the basement.

-- Barbra Hudson

The number of people living in emergency shelters or on the streets surged in all regions of Quebec over the last four years but rose most sharply outside Montreal, a new report says.

Commissioned by the province’s Health Department, the report found that “visible” homelessness in Quebec increased by about 44 per cent between April 2018 and October 2022, and by 33 per cent in Montreal.

The Quebec government is awarding a subsidy of between $5 million and $7 million for two Los Angeles Kings exhibition games in Quebec City, to be held at the Centre Vidéotron in October 2024.

Finance Minister Eric Girard made the announcement on Tuesday morning. He was asked several times about the amount of government assistance.

Matthew Hayes, a sociology professor at St. Thomas University in Fredericton, N.B., said between the 2016 and the 2021 census, Halifax lost 8,140 housing units priced below $1,000 a month. This is a 25 per cent reduction in the stock.

"If you're looking for a low-income apartment or a low-rent apartment, they're almost impossible to find in Halifax," said Hayes, whose work focuses on gentrification and urban studies. "They're disappearing much faster than they're being replaced."

Lorsque le bureau de l’élu de QS a appris ce qui se passait au 2215, boulevard Rosemont, des membres de l’équipe de Gabriel Nadeau-Dubois sont allés à la rencontre des locataires.

«On a des gens qui nous ont dit qu’ils voulaient payer leur loyer, qu’ils ont essayé de toutes les manières pour essayer de le faire en allant même chercher des adresses sur le registraire des entreprises. Et ces gens-là se retrouvent quand même devant le TAL», poursuit M. Nadeau-Dubois.

«Sur mon bail, c’est écrit que je paie en cash, ici, dans l’immeuble. Ça fait trois mois que j’essaie de payer, mais eux veulent que je paie avec des chèques postdatés ou que je fasse une heure de trajet pour aller donner l’argent comptant à leur bureau», explique William Riley, qui vit depuis plus d’un an au 2215 boulevard Rosemont, à Montréal.

M. Riley est poursuivi au Tribunal administratif du logement (TAL) par son nouveau locateur, la société 2215 Rosemont inc., appartenant à Mark Kilajian. Ce dernier demande la résiliation du bail à cause d’un retard de paiement de son loyer de plus de trois semaines. Dans l’immeuble de 67 logements, une vingtaine d’autres locataires ont reçu le même avis.

City hall enforced its eviction notice at Halifax’s Grand Parade encampment today by disconnecting power to the tents still at the site, but even on one of the coldest days of the year, the people living there refuse to leave.

At 9 a.m. this morning, city crews and volunteers from the encampment disconnected the only source of power, which provided heating to all the tents, plunging people living there into the bitter cold.

Kevin McGuire is one of 12 people still living on the property. For him, the tent was a safe space, warm, and comfortable enough.

“I’m feeling really cold. It was minus 25 this morning. They took away my power which was my only source of heat,” said McGuire. “This is only going to make me sicker and I’d be lucky if I can survive it.

"We've got people who walk alongside them for a couple of months, and then they're on their own," he told The Current's Matt Galloway.

The program was born mid-2021, after intervention workers noticed many people falling into homelessness since the beginning of the pandemic didn't fit the usual profile.

"[They're] somebody who's just struggling and a few dollars away from homelessness, unable to pay their rent, or they're part of maybe a classic rental eviction," he said.

The widely held stereotype that people experiencing homelessness would be more likely to spend extra cash on drugs, alcohol and “temptation goods” has been upended by a study that found a majority used a $7,500 payment mostly on rent, food, housing, transit and clothes.

The biases punctured by the study highlight the difficulties in developing policies to reduce homelessness, say the Canadian researchers behind it.