Chinatown residents want free food distribution for the unhoused moved

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Some Chinatown residents say they hope Mayor Valérie Plante’s decision to crack down on encampments and bylaw infractions will extend to their neighbourhood, which has been dealing with an escalating homelessness situation.

On Sunday, Complexe Guy-Favreau residents plan to gather outside the building to pressure the city to dismantle a nearby encampment and move a weekly distribution of free food for the unhoused.

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The food giveaway by a group from outside Chinatown takes place every Sunday afternoon, often with loud music and cars parked illegally in front of Guy-Favreau, said Fo Niemi, who is helping residents coordinate the protest.

Tables, tents and sun shelters are set up in public areas, he said.

“Afterwards, when they leave, the whole area is littered with trash and human waste,” added Niemi, executive director of the Center for Research-Action on Race Relations.

“The residents aren’t against the idea of having food distribution but it shouldn’t happen right outside their homes,” Niemi said. “It’s getting a bit too much.”

Many residents are seniors who have lived in Guy-Favreau for decades and their quality of life is deteriorating, he said.

Several have complained to the police, to no avail, he said. Residents accuse police and the city of not enforcing municipal bylaws regarding noise, illegal parking and garbage.

City spokesperson Guillaume Rivest said volunteers are behind the food distribution.

“The Ville-Marie borough provides surveillance and constant cleaning of the surrounding area,” he said.

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Rivest said the city and the borough will be asking for “support from the health and social services network in intervening with these vulnerable people.”

Chinatown residents have been complaining for months about crime and homelessness. In May, people who live in the neighbourhood told The Gazette about rampant drug use and volatile confrontations.

Niemi said residents also want the city to find a permanent solution to the encampments that regularly pop up outside a Chinatown church. He said police occasionally take them down but the camps resurface days later.

On Friday, the City of Montreal took down two camps — one pro-Palestinian, another in support of unhoused people.

Plante said the pro-Palestinian camp at Victoria Square in downtown Montreal posed “major safety issues” for those on-site and people who work nearby, in addition to contravening a municipal bylaw.

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Hours later,  an encampment was dismantled at Parc des Faubourgs near La Fontaine Park. It was set up to protest the city’s approach to dismantling encampments for unhoused people.

Simon Charron, a spokesperson for the mayor, told The Gazette the Parc-des-Faubourgs camp was taken down because the right to demonstrate “cannot interfere with the right to safety and free movement in public space.”

He added: “As we made clear when we dismantled the encampment at Victoria Square, we cannot permanently and statically occupy a public place, regardless of the cause. Public space must remain public.”

As for Chinatown, Charron the city “cannot tolerate fixed camps on public land. As a society, we cannot accept the street becoming a hospital or open-air housing.”

He said the city “always intervenes in a humane and sensitive way with people experiencing homelessness. Our teams always take the necessary time to refer people to different resources according to their specific needs.”

ariga@postmedia.com

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