Philanthropists raise $4 million for city initiative to help get people off the street
Ruby Pratka, Local Journalism Initiative reporter
editor@qctonline.com
A philanthropic initiative spearheaded by the Ville de Québec and the Choquette family has raised nearly $4 million in four months to help people experiencing homelessness get off the street, Mayor Bruno Marchand announced on Sept. 17.
The funds raised through the Un toit avant tout (“A roof comes first”) project will be shared among several organizations helping struggling people in the city, including Lauberivière, YWCA-Québec, L’Archipel d’Entraide, Café-Rencontre Centre-Ville and Projet Intervention Prostitution Québec, to support the Porte-clés (“keychain”) initiative which gives housing-insecure people access to affordable housing and other support services.
First launched in 2015, the initiative has helped over 400 people find housing, and 85 per cent of recipients have managed to stay off the streets, according to the Ville de Québec. “Thanks to the funds raised by the campaign, a second dedicated team will be deployed, doubling the response capacity. This will allow more than 200 additional people to be supported towards residential and social stability over the next four years,” city officials said in a statement.
Marchand thanked the Choquette family – businesspeople Claude Choquette and Hélène de Grandmont and their three sons, Pierre-Thomas, Marc-Olivier and Charles-Antoine Choquette – for “having the boldness to support a cause that isn’t sexy, and for which [people] may have prejudices.” Twenty-six families or family foundations made contributions of over $100,000, which will be used for a range of services from rent subsidies to moving van rental.
“We work together, with heart and with results to … get people off the street, and once we have managed to support them in housing, they obtain residential stability,” Marchand said. “They come out of this environment where it’s hard to regain control of your life, where there’s violence, where it’s hard to regain your dignity. Porte-Clés and others work with you to ensure that we can find a way forward, so that you can rest, take care of yourself and contribute to the community according to your abilities, as a worker, a potential worker, a volunteer or a citizen … because we need you, we want to have you in this community.” For Benoit Coté, director general of PECH, which works with homeless and housing- insecure people with mental health issues in Saint-Roch, access to housing is “the spinal column” of any effort to get people off the street, and the three levels of government, the community sector and the private sector all have some responsibility. He cited a La Presse report based on data from the Quebec coroner’s office which found that over 100 homeless people died on the province’s streets last year. “This is a public health problem that goes beyond one level of government.” He called on the provincial government to create a transpartisan commission to address the situation, adding that the presence of privately funded projects “doesn’t mean [public] institutions should diminish their involvement.”
Stéphanie Lampron, executive director of YWCA- Québec, said the funding boost for the Porte-Clés program would allow organizations like hers to better co-ordinate to help people in need. “We all have different expertise, and we’re putting it together at the service of the common good. We provide beds for women waiting for housing, but if they need help with money management, I can send them to Lauberivière, and if they need mental health support, I can send them to PECH. We’ve been working together for 10 years, but this allows us to take it to another level.”
To learn more or to make a donation, visit fdg.ca/pages/un-toit-avant-tout.