Montreal’s Village is the heart of the 2SLGBTQ+ community in the city, but it’s also been facing safety concerns due to homelessness, drug use, and mental health issues in the area.
Residents and business owners are calling for more to be done and launched a petition demanding change, as Mayor Valérie Plante Thursday announced an investment of $2 million to support social and economic initiatives in the Village.
“We want the mayor to find solutions right now, not in three years or five years to make us feel more safe,” said Younes El-Moustir, a Village resident and local real estate agent.
“Before putting money on the beautification of the streets, we need to put a lot of money on the real problem.”
El-Moustir started a petition because he says problems are often on his business’ doorstep.
“Sometimes some people here just go in, just start screaming at my assistant. They feel scared, sometimes when we come here in the morning, we get some people smoking drugs. And this is a problem for us,” explained El-Moustir.
The mayor says she doesn’t want the streets to become a hospital or injection site, and that more police officers as well as intervention workers have been on the ground.
“We will not give up and we will continue. My messages to say it will probably take a while before we see all the results and this is why as well as we go on security working with SPVM, reinforcing SPVM presence, we also want to make sure that people feel welcome and safe,” said Valérie Plante.
However, Pierre Samson, a Village resident says, “I go to the gym every day, I walk on the street, I see the same problems, same frequency, the same number, and last year, I wrote the letter two years ago and City Montreal complaining about the street. They didn’t do nothing, anything.”
At the inauguration of the public space, Place du Village, the mayor called on Quebec and Ottawa to help tackle the social issues in the area.
“The city working with all the partners, we’re doing everything we can but it comes also with higher decision like housing. The housing crisis is huge. It has a huge impact on people, vulnerable people in the public space,” said Plante. “I’m working with the government and need more projects like more housing and more shelters. I’m working with this saying we need more support in terms of mental health,” said Plante.
Plante says the city established a phone line dedicated to people in the Village, as well as business owners, to speak with intervention workers in the case of incidents. The number is 438-372-4387 and she said the response time is around 20 minutes sometimes.
For the city’s Official Opposition, Ensemble Montréal, they want to see more done on the resources front for the homeless.
“When it comes to locations, places where there should be more shelters open,” said Benoit Langevin, the Ensemble Montréal’s spokesperson on homelessness. “We’re talking about 1,600 beds for winter time but now in the next month Hôtel-Dieu closing, where’s the plan? Who’s coordinating all this and can we have a bit of transparency on what is the city going to do about it?”
El-Moustir says he wants to see more support.
“We pay a lot of taxes, it’s increased each year so we need to see something better here and it’s very important,” El-Moustir said. “If no solutions come, I will just close my business like a lot of people did last year.”
