Camp under viaduct can stay
A dozen people are living in a camp under the Van Horne viaduct, and a court injunction says they can stay there for the time being. The city had wanted to move the residents on, since it’s close to a skate park and a basketball court.
Homeless people hesitate to call emergency services even when it’s critically necessary, because they know they will not be treated the same as other people, an observation made by organizations working among them. Homeless also often carry an invisible weight of unpayable fines and other legal encumbrances that make them wary of engaging with the forces of order.
dhomas 09:44 on 2026-06-10 Permalink
I don’t understand the point of “démenteler” these encampments. These people will still be homeless. They’ll just be homeless elsewhere. The last time they dismantled the Notre-Dame encampment (2024? Early 2025?), it just sent the homeless population everywhere else. Shortly after, there were people living in the park close to my house near Radisson metro. Tents appeared on the banks of the 25 (they are still there to this day). It solves nothing and just causes more inconvenience and stress to the homeless population.
On the topic of emergency services, I recently spent a few long periods in the ER at the Glen and I can confirm that homeless people are definitely treated differently (indigenous people, as well). While I was there, a homeless person came in for triage. He needed help getting out of his wheelchair and into a waiting room chair. I’d seen other patients get this kind of help. No one wanted to help the homeless guy. I ended up helping him out of the chair myself.
Kate 10:02 on 2026-06-10 Permalink
I was thinking about your first point, dhomas, and I believe it comes down to this: the city can’t quite face the reality that if it wants to displace an encampment, it should be moving the residents to another encampment, because that would acknowledge both the permanence of some of the camps and the apparent impossibility of giving the displaced residents more proper and decent places to live.
We’re edging closer to permanent camps anyway, with recent discussions of adding toilets and showers to some of them, but we’re not quite there yet.
I hope whoever’s in your entourage that has needed the ER will recover. Good on you for helping the homeless man.
Chris 11:30 on 2026-06-10 Permalink
>I don’t understand the point of “démenteler” these encampments
Perhaps because you’re looking from their point of view.
From the point of view of one’s neighbourhood being ruined (not saying that’s my personal view, but it is a view held by many), moving them on solves the problem and shares it around.
Kate 12:09 on 2026-06-10 Permalink
It’s a knotty problem. I can’t deny that the presence of people with mental and/or drug problems is unsettling, unhealthy and occasionally dangerous. Solutions have to be found that are bigger than any of the stopgaps we’ve seen so far, but I don’t know what they are.
Blork 14:01 on 2026-06-10 Permalink
Dhomas, I think you’re only seeing homelessness as a single problem (“these people have nowhere to live”), but homelessness brings a cluster of problems, including that obvious one, but also problems of safety and security for the general public, issues around limited funding for social issues and the competition for those resources, and all sorts of other things. As such, not every solution can address the full cluster of problems. Some solutions only address one immediate problem.
In this case, moving the encampment is intended to address the problem of security for people who want to use the skate park and the adjoining social areas in relative safety. While some might take offence at the idea that the unhoused are somehow a security risk we have to be realistic. There are some among the unhoused who are potentially dangerous (mental health problems and/or drug problems). An absurd example is this: would the playground of a garderie be an acceptable place for a homeless encampment? Probably not. It’s a sliding scale, and arguably the skate park lies somewhere in between “garderie playground” and “remote field next to a river.”