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The Ricochet homeless centre that operated in the West Island for three and a half years providing emergency shelter and transitional housing for 50 clients, closed its doors Friday.
Roughly 50 residents, half in the long-term transitional housing unit, and the other half in the emergency overnight shelter, were forced to leave the premises. Ricochet gave emergency kits to residents with nowhere to go that included sleeping bags, sleeping pads, tents and backpacks.
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Ricochet was the only emergency shelter operating between downtown Montreal and Vaudrueuil, a span of about 40 kilometres.
“It’s horrible,” said Tania Charron, director of Ricochet. “I gave each and every one a survival kit and they will have to go out into the area to find some place to sleep.”
Many were in the process of finding lodging, and Charron worries they could now slip through the cracks. The centre was full up to the day it was closed.
The regional health authority CIUSSS-de-l’Ouest-de-l’Ile de Montréal, which owns the building in which Ricochet was housed, is taking back the property to use it for youth services. Ricochet had been advised months in advance that the changeover was coming, and had been looking for a new location. Charron said the organization is still looking and she is hoping to find something soon.
The centre will continue to run shuttle buses from the West Island to other shelters in the city to provide lodging. It will also provide meals and services from the Westview Bible Church Tuesdays and Thursdays from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m.
Encampments are illegal in the West Island, Charron noted. She said many of her clients were headed toward Dorval, to seek shelter in open spaces or near the shopping mall.
Benoit Langevin, Ensemble Montréal city councillor and opposition spokesperson on housing, wrote on X that “The closure of Ricochet made me see exhausted employees, people on the streets with nothing and people trying to organize themselves.”
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