Number of campsites dismantled by Montreal officials doubles since 2021

The number of makeshift campsites dismantled by Montreal officials downtown has doubled since 2021, according to documents obtained by Radio-Canada through an access to information request. 

The city dismantled 105 campsites, which include one or more tents, in 2021 in the borough of Ville-Marie.

In 2022, that number jumped to 248. 

So far this year, between Jan. 1 and Aug. 9, authorities have dismantled 224 campsites in Ville-Marie.

Josefina Blanco, the executive committee member in charge of homelessness, said the city cannot accept that people are living in tents in public spaces, but her administration has been calling on the upper levels of government to invest more in social and affordable housing.

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Benoit Langevin, opposition critic on homelessness, said, "We're not fixing anything. We're just pushing it away and sending it to another borough."

"We have to make sure we know what we are doing," he said. "I think we don't know what we are doing right now."

Langevin said he is questioning how much is being spent on dismantling these camps and storing people's belongings. He said he would like the city to have clearer objectives and to provide more data about its efforts to help people living without a home.

Resilience Montreal's David Chapman says people need a proper roof over their heads.

"Ideally, apartments would be attainable. Ideally, apartments would be available," he said, and it would also be ideal if there was enough shelter space throughout the city.

"The problem is that those things just aren't there."

Campsites are like a community of necessity, said Chapman. The alternatives are people living alone in abandoned buildings or small patches of forest, he said, and that's more dangerous. 

Nicholas Singcaster, an Old Brewery Mission intervention worker, says there are more people sleeping outdoors in tents than using shelters these days.

He checks on the campsites daily, and he helps some of their residents get into subsidized housing when he can, but it's a long process. Dismantling camps makes it harder to keep track of the people he's working with, he said.

The makeshift campsites can be well organized, but some are a bit messy, said Singcaster.

He said there are likely hundreds of campsites throughout the city, and that number has been going up since the pandemic.

He gave CBC News a tour of a campsite that has been in operation for a few years, with people staying there even through the winter, he said.

There are about a dozen people living in tents, tucked under some trees between a bike path and a fence with tarps as roofs. There are camp stoves, propane tanks and clothes drying on lines.

Singcaster says the solution is to offer more services and subsidized housing. But until then, these camps are getting dismantled by the city as soon as residents complain, he said.

"Those people will just end up somewhere else," he said. "They could end up in a forest, close to a rail[way], where it is difficult to reach them."