Residents of Notre-Dame Street encampment spared from eviction for another month

A group of people living in a tent encampment east of downtown Montreal has won a reprieve from eviction until the end of August. 

Their camp, which is on property belonging to Quebec's Transport Ministry, was supposed to be dismantled after an injunction blocking the operation was set to expire Monday.

But in a ruling issued Monday, a Quebec Superior Court judge said that neither the ministry or anyone else can proceed with the eviction or a cleanup operation targeting the camp until Aug. 27.

The order applies to the strip of green space running along Notre-Dame Street East between Pie-XI Boulevard and St-Clément Street.

Justice Gregory Moore said the province and the City of Montreal can only intervene on the site to make sure access to the nearby bike path and Morgan Park are clear. More specifically, tents cannot be set up within three metres of the bike path or 15 metres from the park, and cannot be fixed to or leaned against a fence or other property belonging to a private citizen. 

The encampment was already cleared out once, in 2020, when Montreal firefighters issued an eviction order after a propane tank fire broke out on the site.

In November 2024, the Transport Ministry initiated another round of evictions and partially dismantled the camp.

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Montreal should care for homeless people better, stop taking down encampments, new reports says

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The city's public consultation office says Montreal needs to take stronger leadership when it comes to homelessness, adding that cohabitation efforts are falling short.

Notices were once again distributed in June of this year before a legal clinic advocating for the homeless population, the Clinique juridique itinérante (CJI), demanded an injunction on the dismantlement. 

Quebec's Superior Court awarded the CJI the injunction until the end of June. The CJI, the city and Quebec's attorney general then agreed to extend the injunction again until July 10. That day, the court extended it until July 21. 

Earlier this month, Montreal's public consultations office published a report on cohabitation, saying the city should not dismantle homeless encampments until it develops a policy governing when and how they can be taken down.

At the time the report came out, on July 10, the city said dismantling encampments, though a "last resort," was sometimes necessary to protect the safety of people in and around the sites.

The CJI said it would not comment on Monday's ruling.