Homelessness front and centre for Montreal’s mayoral candidates

With the rising number of people living on Montreal’s streets, the number of homeless encampments in the city is growing.

On Friday, the homelessness issue was front and centre on the municipal campaign trail.

Those running for mayor are aware that the temperature is dropping, meaning living rough will soon become much more precarious.

“It was the number one priority that we announced, and on day one of our campaign in July,” said Transition Montreal leader Craig Sauvé.

“The first thing will be homelessness,” said Ensemble Montreal leader Soraya Martinez Ferrada.

Martinez Ferrada said that, if elected, she will put $100 million towards emergency shelters, with the money earmarked for renovations or to build or buy buildings for shelters in more places across the entire city.

“To relieve the pressure on the fact that right now, many of the refuges are just overflowing with people because we don’t have enough spaces,” she said.

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There has been a chronic lack of space in homeless shelters during Quebec’s cold winter months, and the number of people needing them continues to rise.

According to the 2024 census, the number of sheltered homeless people increased by 15 per cent in a year and a half.

Sauvé is proposing a tax on what he calls the ultra-rich, saying people who own a condo or home worth more than $3.5 million will pay more in taxes.

“We’re going to take the entirety of that money and put it towards homelessness, which would, in our estimation, triple the amount of funding the city of Montreal gives to homelessness,” he said.

Projet Montreal’s potential next executive committee chair said developing transitional housing continues to be a priority.

“We need to continue to buy land like this land that we gave to a non-profit organization to do social housing,” said Gracia Kasoki Katahwa, the current CDN-NDG borough mayor.

While the ways to deal with homelessness differ between the candidates, it is an issue they all plan to tackle the day they start in office.