Calls for housing grow after naked man holding knife breaks into Chinatown apartment

A 25-year-old woman had the fright of her life when she got home to her apartment in Montreal's Chinatown after work and came face-to-face with a naked man wielding a knife and a fire extinguisher.

The woman says there was glass all over the kitchen floor — where her back door is — as well as a brick and the pin to the fire extinguisher on the ground.

The man was holding the household's communal knife. 

Jamie, whose last name CBC agreed to withhold as she fears for her safety, stood paralyzed as the man tried to explain himself for a minute before running for the door.

"I was terrified, of course, the guy had weapons in his hands and he was nude," she said.

"I only later registered it because in the moment, I was just so shocked. I definitely felt fear over being assaulted."

She says she and one of her roommates called the police and the man, who wasn't fully lucid, was arrested shortly after.

"We're all unnerved," she said.

Jamie, a microbiology student at the University of Victoria, has been doing her co-op in Montreal and moved in on April 1. She says she has been worried about growing visible homelessness in Chinatown, and she's now used to seeing intoxicated people or people experiencing psychosis. She hopes the city will take her story seriously and offer more solutions to keep people off the streets.

Vincent Lupien, Jamie's landlord who has been pushing the city to tackle the issue of homelessness, reached out to the Center for Research-Action on Race Relations (CRARR) to support her as she assesses her legal options.

Lupien had the back door boarded up and is looking at beefing up security on his properties.

Fo Niemi, CRARR's executive director, says the incident "illustrates the need for greater safety" in the area.

"The police must work with health-care workers and the community to ensure that people with dangerous behaviours can't just walk free in the community," he said.

Rise in homelessness

Last fall, a shelter at the Complexe Guy-Favreau in Chinatown closed down after residents complained, but "most [unhoused] people stayed," said James Hughes, the president and CEO of the Old Brewery Mission, which has a shelter a few blocks away.

He says workers at the Old Brewery Mission have noticed an increase in incidents, as well as more encampments, and more people sleeping in public spaces and Metros than ever before.

"There's a layered crisis — the housing crisis and opioid crisis on top of each other," he said.

"It's just screaming out for more resources: housing resources and professional medical resources being available. Those two things together are the foundation for taking on a very difficult, complex issue that's only going to get worse if we don't start investing."

The city has been looking into alternative ways to help people staying in encampments and will be holding public consultations for better cohabitation, which Hughes says are positive developments.

He commends Jamie for having held her ground and allowing the situation to de-escalate, and says others who are ever in a similar situation should do the same.

"To find this individual obviously in a state of psychosis in her kitchen with no clothes on, I just can't imagine how she felt, especially the fact that he was holding a knife. You can't think of anything really more scary," said Hughes.

His heart also goes out to the individual in question who was arrested, who Hughes says perhaps would not have found himself in that situation had he had access to the kind of mental health resources that are necessary.

"Most people with mental illness are happily housed, they're not homeless, they're not behaving in that way. This is a situation that can be controlled if the proper resources are available," said Hughes.