Frontline services resume at Chez Doris, following 2-month partial shutdown

More than two months after a serious staffing crunch forced Chez Doris to significantly cut its activities, the shelter, which offers services to women struggling with housing in downtown Montreal, says it is resuming most of its activities. 

Fifteen new staff have been hired since Chez Doris partially closed late last September. They've been getting training for the past couple of weeks, according to Executive Director Marina Boulos-Winton. The shelter opened Monday at 8 a.m., beginning a gradual return to services. 

During the partial closure, Chez Doris's centre on Chomedey Street near Cabot Square was open only Tuesdays and Thursdays between 1 p.m. and 4 p.m. It will now be open 8 a.m. to 4 p.m., Monday through Friday. The organization's 24-bed overnight shelter has remained open. In all, Chez Doris has four locations offering a range of services to women experiencing homelessness. 

Boulos-Winton hopes to hire staff that will cover weekend shifts after the holidays and for evening shifts from 4 p.m. to 10 p.m. in the coming months.

"We did not make a major announcement to the network … just to get staff acclimated with a smaller number of women," Boulos-Winton said, adding they will be doing so next week. 

The organization also made several upgrades to the Chomedey Street location, including expanding the dining room to seat 85 people, up from 50. It also updated lighting and chairs and made some other esthetic upgrades, Boulos-Winton said. 

Monday, 25 women used the shelter's services, which include breakfast and lunch, showers and respite beds. During the pandemic, Chez Doris limited its services to unhoused women, but Boulos-Winton said they will now once again be available to women who have housing. 

"There is still a need for women who need hunger-relief services. That's a form of homelessness prevention and it breaks isolation as well. It improves mental health," she said. 

Boulos-Winton hopes to raise up to $500,000 in 2024 to cover other needed repairs to the townhouse, such as giving it a new roof and replacing its heating, ventilation and air-conditioning system.

In the time Chez Doris reduced its service offer, an upward trend in violence against women — especially Indigenous women, girls, trans and two-spirited people — in the streets of Montreal worsened, says Laura Aguiar, co-ordinator of the Native Women's Shelter of Montreal's Iskweu project.

The project was initiated in response to the missing and murdered Indigenous women crisis and aims to reduce the number of Indigenous women and girls who go missing and provide support to women in precarious situations.

Statistics compiled by Iskweu and shared with CBC show that between Aug. 22 and Dec. 12, there were 15 missing persons cases among Indigenous women in downtown Montreal. There were also seven hostage-takings, 10 cases of human trafficking, nine sexual assaults, 37 cases of intimate partner violence and one possible murder.

"I really firmly believe the Chez Doris closure had a huge impact on violence against Indigenous women, girls, trans and two-spirit people," Aguiar told CBC News Monday. 

The sudden cutbacks in September at Chez Doris also put increased strain on a nearby day shelter, Resilience Montreal, which has been decrying a lack of funding for some time, Aguiar added. 

When Chez Doris announced it was pulling back in September, Boulos-Winton said she needed to hire between 24 and 28 employees. It's unclear what caused the staffing shortfall. 

At the time, Boulos-Winton said, "There are a lot more psychiatric problems, a lot more drug addictions. We just need to take a pause, and take a breather, reset and restart our services properly," adding there had also been incidents where women became violent with staff.