Photo: The Canadian Press

People jog near a homeless encampment on Notre-Dame Street, in eastern Montreal, on Friday, October 25, 2024.

On a strip of grass separating a busy thoroughfare in eastern Montreal from a block in the Hochelaga-Maisonneuve neighborhood stand about two dozen tents, a reflection of a real estate market that cannot provide enough affordable housing .

Tents along this strip of land adjacent to Notre-Dame Street have been in place since 2020, when the number of homeless people increased rapidly during the COVID-19 pandemic. Homeless people build shelters there and in other empty spaces around the city, and social workers – under police supervision – dismantle them, forcing campers to pitch their tents elsewhere, only to evict them once moreover.

Montreal and other Canadian cities are grappling with the seemingly intractable problem of homelessness and trying various approaches to keep people from sleeping on the streets, often with mixed results. But while the homeless problem isn’t easy to solve, experts say what is clear is that evictions don’t help.

Isidro Escobar, 22, has been living in one of the tents on Rue Notre-Dame for almost a year. Before that, he lived in a tent near the old Radio-Canada tower, 1.5 kilometers away.

“I lost everything after my divorce,” he said Thursday.

Escobar said the City of Montreal gave him two eviction orders. But he said if he had to leave, he would pitch his tent elsewhere.

Not far from Escobar, Devint Vézina, 40, He was rebuilding his tent for the fifth time, he said, adding that his latest one will be big enough for 10 people.

“Where do you want me to go?” That’s the real question.

When asked, a spokesperson for the city of Montreal did not specify where people like Escobar and Vézina should go, but said that “urban encampments are not a viable, safe or permanent solution.” The city said it is working with community organizations to give people sleeping rough access to affordable housing with services tailored to their needs.

Montreal does not keep a list of encampments and does not send workers to look for them. Instead, when a tent encampment is reported, authorities assess whether it poses a safety risk, including fire. In August, Montreal announced a pilot project of 60 modular housing units for unhoused people by March 2025.

However, the City continues to dismantle homeless encampments, 110 between January and May 2024, according to a report from the Journal de Montréal.

Montreal doesn’t solve the problem of homelessness by evicting people from encampments, said James Hughes, president and CEO of Mission Old Brewery. Municipalities, he said, must follow the lead of cities like Houston, Texas, which are creating plans to give vulnerable people access to housing while providing support while they are in an encampment.

“Old, coercive policies” like evictions, Hughes said, are akin to a game of “Whac-A Mole” — forcing people to leave an area only to have them pitch a tent on the street, or in a place away from public view where they cannot receive help if they are in difficulty.

The City of Halifax, for its part, has adopted a different approach towards Montreal. There are five designated locations in Halifax where homeless people can pitch a tent, a “temporary response until suitable shelter and shelter options are available,” the city said.

People sleeping rough have access to toilets, drinking water and needle collections. Additionally, Nova Scotia has purchased small, self-contained pallet shelters for unhoused people in the province, 85 of which are for the Halifax area.

Jeff Karabanow, a professor at Dalhousie University’s school of social work, described designated homeless encampments as deeply problematic, unsanitary and undignified. Still, he said, they are worth keeping until resources are redirected from emergency shelters to affordable housing.

However, municipalities that adopt policies tolerant of encampments risk facing political backlash at the polls. Earlier this month, former Liberal MP Andy Fillmore was elected Halifax’s mayor made a crushing decision after targeting encampments, saying the city’s approach had the effect of attracting unhoused people from outside the province — a claim that Karabanow said is false.

For its part, the City of Toronto said it has taken a “people-centered, human rights-based approach” to connecting people to shelters, services and housing. Advocates say the city began changing how it responds to the homeless after an investigation by Toronto’s ombudsman found “significant injustice” in how authorities cleared encampments in 2021.

Toronto community worker Diana Chan McNally says the city’s change in attitude is a step in the right direction, but remains imperfect because only some encampments receive support.

“We have a two-tiered approach,” she said, adding that the city continues to dismantle encampments and there still isn’t enough affordable housing to meet demand.

Part of the problem is that coexistence is difficult for the inhabitants of the camps and the residents of neighboring houses.

“No neighborhood in the city wants new homeless resources, or subsidized housing in their neighborhood, or tiny houses in their neighborhood, no matter what solution you look at, people oppose it,” said David Chapman, executive director of the community. Resilience Montreal group.

Hugo Michel-Verville, who lives opposite the encampment on Rue Notre-Dame, said he received spit and screams from his unhoused neighbors. Calls to the City of Montreal, the police and responders were ignored, he said.

“There doesn’t seem to be any road map, short or long term, to solving this problem, and that’s what’s scary.”