By Chelsey St-Pierre
The Suburban
“I don’t know where I am going tonight,” Louis Rouillard, a user of Ricochet’s shelter service in Pierrefonds, told The Suburban last week. Thursday night was the last night for Ricochet users as the new location will only be ready by January 2025 and the West Island CIUSSS did not extend the lease for the current location in Pierrefonds-Roxboro.
“I am visiting a potential temporary location this afternoon and two tomorrow,” Ricochet Director Tania Charron said to The Suburban. “This is a very challenging time for all of us.” The organization bought $12,000 worth of back packs, tents, sleeping bags and bus tickets to help offset some of the stress for its users while it works tirelessly to find an interim solution. “In the meantime, we will offer services twice a week at Westview Bible Church, about a ten-minute walk from here and our shuttle service will continue to operate each day. The main thing is that we have to stay in touch with the community to keep a social safety net around them. We want them to feel our presence and dedication,” Charron explained.
Charron says that as many as 75% of users require medications and she is worried about their well-being. She says she will do everything in her power to get them the support that they need during this transition. “Finding a temporary location is a major challenge. Imagine that we have to convince a landlord that it is a good idea to give us space for a few months to house homeless people. It is no easy task, but I will try my very best.”
Rouillard says that trust is easily shaken in his community. “We did not have a good experience. We were run out of the tent communities by police with nowhere to go,” he explained. Rouillard was referred by a friend to Ricochet and was starting to gain a sense of security and belonging. “I cleaned up the grounds here and made things nice as my way of giving back. It is a beautiful place near the water and it helps me to meditate as part of a kind of healing. I was abused by a priest as a child and my family did not support me. I could not live with that hypocrisy and I ended up in the streets.” Rouillard says that the betrayal he felt by his church and his family was relived when his tent community was “run out of town” as he described it. Today at 64 years old, Rouillard started to regain some trust with the support he was receiving at Ricochet which offers an array of services to help users deal with past trauma and work towards solutions to surmount homelessness. “It is more than just a shelter and I am so grateful for what they have done and for these back packs. I guess I will take it day by day.”
Rouillard is not alone. Fifty people are now looking for shelter until Ricochet’s new location opens in January while many of Montreal’s temporary shelters are closing for the summer season.
Alexandre Cadieux, a spokesperson for the West Island CIUSSS, told The Suburban that the agency’s commitment to Ricochet remains unwavering and that it has been supporting the Ricochet organization since 2020 in its search for a premises to house homeless people. “Since 2021, we have notably extended the lease for Pavillon Pierrefonds four times, initially planned for a period of two months, in order to guarantee the continuity of services. In April 2023, we informed Ricochet of the non-renewal of the lease since the spaces are intended to accommodate young people in rehabilitation, and that they require work.”
Pierrefonds-Roxboro City Councillor and the Official Opposition critic for Homelessness in Montreal Benoît Langevin says that it is not the Health Authority’s job to search for locations and that the Plante administration is missing the buck on its duties. “It is up to the City of Montreal to assist local organizations in securing a location and associated permits, not the provincial government or health authorities. The provincial government is responsible for financing and assisting with the services and operations proposed to it by the organizations with the support of the city. It makes no sense that the city just sat down here in the middle of a crisis, pointing its finger at the Quebec government with a blanket statement when it has 79 vacant buildings (owned by the city) that should have been assessed as possible relocations, amongst other options. The city has to plan its needs and coordinate the project that needs to go forward in collaboration with the organization to put forth the request to the Quebec government which this administration never had the leadership to do.”
“We work with cities for locations. We offer services inside the walls and they are responsible to find and propose spaces. It’s no easy task, we are aware of that. We need everyone’s cooperation working together,” spokesperson for the Quebec Minister of Social Services Lambert Drainville told The Suburban. “Homelessness has increased by 44% percent since 2021 so it’s a social issue that is lived across North America.” n