Beauport

Transitional housing community planned for Beauport

Ruby Pratka, Local Journalism Initiative reporter

editor@qctonline.com

If all goes according to plan, six formerly homeless Quebec City residents will move into temporary housing in Beauport in June, as part of a pilot project announced by the Ville de Québec, the city’s public housing authority, the Quebec government and the CIUSSS de la Capitale-Nationale.

Four modular units similar to portable classrooms will be set up on vacant city-owned land adjacent to the Parc-O-Bus D’Estimauville. Three of the units will be divided into two studio apartments each, and the fourth will house a common area, a laundromat and offices.

“These new transitional housing spaces will provide individuals experiencing homelessness or at risk of becoming homeless with a stable and safe living environment for a period of 30 to 60 days, before transitioning to independent housing,” city officials said in a statement.

“The small number of units will allow the CIUSSS de la Capitale- Nationale residential stability team to provide tailored support to residents. Admitted residents will be recommended by community organizations, partners and the healthcare network.”

The apartments will be maintained by the public housing authority, and a yet-to-be-determined community organization will be responsible for social activities. The city will loan the land, waive permit fees, reimburse costs related to site development and connect the units to municipal water and sewer networks. The $1.7-million project will be funded jointly by the Société d’habitation du Québec, the CIUSSS and the city.

Coun. Marie-Pierre Boucher, member of the city executive committee responsible for hous- ing, told the QCT the project takes some inspiration from a similar project backed by the Nova Scotia government; that project, launched in Lower Sackville, N.S. using tiny homes, opened in late 2024 with capacity for 70 people. Since then, two additional “shelter villages” have opened in Halifax, according to the Nova Scotia Ministry of Housing and Social Development. Boucher said a project of that size was not planned for Quebec City, but the city was open to expanding the Beauport project or creating others in other areas if the first pilot project went well. Quebec City chose a version of the “tiny home” model because “it can be installed quickly, and if we have to move it in two years, we can do that,” she said.

“We looked for city land that would be accessible, that was big enough and that could be hooked up [to the power and water networks] quickly, where there were support organizations and where people would have access to public transit and to things like a grocery store and a pharmacy,” she added.

She described the project as “a springboard for people who have lost their home or who are coming off the street … who will go live in an apartment afterward.”

Frédéric Keck, assistant director of partnerships in the mental health, homelessness and addictions division of the CIUSSS de la Capitale-Nationale, said he hoped the project would help people at risk of homelessness stay off the street. “If we can get people soon after losing housing, that’s a win; after a year in the street it is a lot more complicated to bring people back into housing. Our shelters are overloaded and anything we can do to reduce pressure on them is a good thing.”

He acknowledged that amid the ongoing shortage of affordable rental housing, finding permanent housing for residents at the end of their two-month stay in the studio “will be our biggest challenge.”

An information session on the Beauport project was planned for April 8, after this newspaper went to press. “We’re not catapulting this project into people’s backyards,” Boucher said. “We’re working with the CIUSSS and the community sector to have a safety net around these people.”

“Just because someone is homeless doesn’t mean they’re a delinquent,” Boucher said. “But a lot of people with chronic homelessness can have mental health problems or drug problems … and there’s an element of fear of the unknown – if you or I dress differently and hang out in a park, we might provoke anxiety and fear in some people,” she said. “The fear is legitimate and we need to understand where it comes from.”

Although Mayor Bruno Marchand campaigned on a long-term plan to reach “zero homelessness” in 2021, the city is dealing with a stubborn homelessness problem which advocates say is exacerbated by inflation, the ripple effects of the pandemic and an acute shortage of affordable housing. A recent report by the Quebec Ministry of Health and Social Services indicates that the number of homeless people in the Capitale-Nationale region living in shelters or other emergency resources rose by 16 per cent between 2022 and 2024.

On April 3, the city announced a campaign in collaboration with philanthropist Claude Choquette and his family and the Fondation Dufresne-Gauthier to raise $3.2 million to shore up the Porte-clés program, an initiative run by nine local organizations, including Lauberivière and YWCA Québec, aimed at offering people coming out of homelessness a place to live with no preconditions; the same week, Le Soleil reported that the CIUSSS had revived a plan — shelved when the pandemic hit — to open a shelter with medical services and social support in the former Salvation Army facility on Côte du Palais. That facility, with space for 30, should open in early 2026.