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When the social safety net fails, municipalities are left with the visible consequences. Montreal can support its organizations and boroughs, co-ordinate emergency response and intervene when encampments appear. However, it cannot replace the housing, health and income policies which should have prevented the situation in the first place. Homelessness becomes a municipal issue when it appears in public spaces, though it starts long before then.

“We can no longer turn a blind eye,” said Montreal Mayor Soraya Martinez Ferrada. She is right. But let’s not confuse the place where the crisis appears with the place where it is created.

A tent in a park is not primarily a park issue. It often tells a history of upheavals: unaffordable rent, discharge from a hospital or a prison without another place to stay, youth protection without long-term support, or care interrupted at a critical moment. Then the issue enters a new realm. It is no longer about housing, poverty or continuity of care. It becomes an issue of encampment, cohabitation, hygiene or safety. A failure of public systems is then managed by municipalities.

This is not a neutral shift. It turns a prevention crisis into a local management problem. The question is no longer why a person has become homeless, but how to manage their presence in public spaces.

However, it would be reductive to assign causes to Quebec City and Ottawa and consequences to municipalities. Montreal is not just a passive backdrop to the crisis. Together with community organizations and boroughs, it absorbs the most visible part. The city must act but within a fragmented public framework: responsibilities are shared but the levers of power are not.

When municipalities bear the crisis

The figures illustrate the scale of the phenomenon. The initial results of the provincial count conducted April 15,........

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