Quebec City pushes back deadline to end homelessness again, shares vision for long-term action

After promising to end homelessness in 2025 during the last election campaign and then moving the target date to 2030 last spring, Quebec City Mayor Bruno Marchand is shifting his focus to taking long-term measures to provide housing for people – without a deadline.

“I’m sorry to say that we will not have ended homelessness by the end of the term,” Marchand said Thursday.

“If Finland is working on a 30-year plan, Quebec City will definitely need time. But we want to end homelessness,” Marchand said.

Although the city is no longer meeting a short-term deadline to make homelessness a thing of the past, it announced that Vision en matière d’itinérancea 44-page report that outlines a path for Quebec City to stand out by 2030 “thanks to its collective efforts and sustainability, lasting solutions … to improve the quality of life of its vulnerable citizens.”

In 2024, Quebec City will spend an additional $1.5 million to deal with homelessness in the city, bringing total spending on the issue to $4 million, more than doubling the $1.7 million on who spent them in 2021.

According to the report, Quebec City will spend the money on strengthening social safety nets, speeding up the process of building more social housing and affordable housing units, and creating more inclusive public spaces and more social opportunities for people experiencing lack of shelter in their communities.

The city plans to implement these measures by working more closely with community organizations, public health authorities, businesses, indigenous communities — which the city says were consulted in developing its vision.

Marie-Pierre Boucher, a member of the city’s executive committee and the person in charge of combating homelessness, said that, unlike in previous years, the city now works more in collaboration with other institutions and organizations with common goals.

“We used to work in silos. That’s not the case anymore,” Boucher said.

Between 2018 and 2022, the number of people who were not visibly living in Quebec City increased by 36 per cent, the report said. At the same time, the city’s rental vacancy rate in 2022 was 1.6 percent, less than 1 percent for units under $1,000 to rent. As of 2023, the city says there are more than 2,000 people waiting for subsidized housing.

Marchand said the recent homelessness summit helped put the issue on the province’s agenda, but as for how much money the city needs from the Coalition Avenir Québec government, the mayor said “it’s hard to put a number on it.” .

First, people need a roof over their heads, but that’s just the beginning, and there’s more to come, Marchand said.

Between 2018 and 2022, the number of people who were visibly homeless in Quebec City increased by 36 percent, the report said. (Dillon Hodgin/CBC)

Community groups and opposition leaders welcome ‘first step’

Mary-Lee Plante, co-ordinator at RAIIQ, a collection of 40 different groups working to prevent homelessness, said community groups were already working hand-in-hand with authorities to help people get housed, but she was “hopeful” and “eager” to see what actions the city will announce in the future to make the vision a reality.

“It’s the first step. It’s the beginning of something,” Plante said.

Alicia Despins, a councilor for the Official Opposition Party, Québec d’Abord, agrees that a vision is the first step.

“The first step is to make sure everyone is around the table, everyone is talking, everyone knows what the main goal is,” Despins said.

Jackie Smith, leader of Transition Québec, also welcomed Quebec City’s long-term plan.

“This is the first time that Quebec City has taken a view on homelessness, which is absolutely crucial because once we recognize that homelessness is a social problem, governments must act on it,” he said. Smith said.

“It’s taking the blame away from the person who’s in a homelessness situation and putting the onus on the system,” she said, adding that community organizations are seeing the benefit of pushing the mayor’s office to act over the past year.