Tent city: residents want to stay
Tent city residents say they don’t want to leave, even though they’re being offered a temporary refuge indoors at the Hochelaga YMCA.
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Kate
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david184 12:36 on 2020-08-23 Permalink
“Give them a place to be,” she said. “They lost their job, they lost their apartment because of COVID and you just want to make them move away. That’s not human.”
Putting aside the fact that these people almost certainly were not employed at any point this year, and that Covid-19 was not the reason for the homelessness, is homeless activism really drifting into “let the homeless live in tents”?
Kate 13:14 on 2020-08-23 Permalink
One thing I learned from participating in the first census of the homeless was that, while there are lifer street people out there, there’s a much larger group – harder to characterize, locate or count – whose living situation is precarious. They may be staying on sufferance with relatives, or with roommates or sexual partners, but when the situation changes or breaks down in any way, they can suddenly find themselves without a home.
Covid has introduced a large factor of instability in people’s lives. It’s one thing if a person occasionally sleeps on your sofa, quite another if you get locked down with that person over months, during which everyone still has to eat and pay rent, but you or your guest may have lost a regular income, and you get tired of sharing and boot them out.
Living in a tent in Montreal in summertime might not be so bad, compared to other things. One of those articles mentions that a community group was giving out tents. But everyone knows it’s got a time limit – few people want to be sleeping in a tent after mid-October.