Demand is at an all-time high at Maison Tangente, a transitional housing shelter for young adults in Montreal’s Mercier-Hochelaga-Maisonneuve.
The 21 spots are always full and workers are forced to turn away people daily, refusing over 500 requests for housing a year.
“When people call here, I’m always telling them, ‘I’m sorry, I don’t have any place. I’m sorry, have you thought to maybe call this place?’” said Marie-Noëlle Perron, Intervention Coordinator at Maison Tangente, explaining that most people have already tried other places before calling. “There’s no place, there’s no place anywhere.”
Perron, who’s been working at Tangente since 2005, spends a lot of the day fielding calls. At 9 a.m. on Monday, a spot was freed – and minutes later, it was taken.
“On a morning like this, it will be like 20 people that will call me and I will have to say, ‘I’m sorry, I don’t have a place.’”
19-year-old Darlyndjie has been staying at Tangente for a month. She’s among those paying $10 a day for a room, food and services, staying for up to three months on the first floor.
“I had a rough past of being admitted in the hospital and then I found a way to get a hold of Tangente,” she said. “I came here and I saw it was a safe place. It was actually, it had all my criteria, checking the boxes perfectly filled just for me.”
She was lucky enough to be taken in almost right away, after looking at other resources as well.
“I called a few other places and they said, ‘Oh, just because you were at the hospital, we can’t take you,’” she recounted. “I was kind of bummed, but I kept going and I got a call and then they accepted me here.”
As she continues her studies to get her high school diploma, she hopes to move up to Tangente’s long-term spots on upper floors, where stays range from eight months to two years.
She says the housing crisis is fueling her desire to stay at Tangente for longer.
“The housing here – the prices are humongous,” she said. “Having not enough resources, money and work is also a problem, so the housing prices really affect us youth.”
Perron says many young people coming to Tangente, between 18 and 25 years old, often have trouble making ends meet.
“I have people coming here knocking at the door saying, ‘I’m going to university. I have a student loan, but if I go to school and I pay my school, I cannot afford food or my rent,’ so they knock here because they cannot live properly anymore,” she said.
Perron says more resources, funding and available housing is needed for these young, vulnerable people to address a growing, unprecedented problem.
“It’s the first year that I’m like, ‘Oh my God, it’s going to be a rough patch,’” she said. “We’re going to something that I’ve never seen in my life.”
Meanwhile, Darlyndjie says seeing the amount of people being turned away at Tangente daily, she understands the rejection invvoled.
“Just keep going, you just keep calling, just keep seeking help in any way,” she said. “You’ll find a place for you.”