The Christmas trees and glittering garlands give the spacious dining room a homey feel. Several hundred people — mostly men, but quite a few women — find seats, chat in small groups, exclaim over the desserts. It’s another evening at La Maison de Lauberivière, which houses Quebec City’s largest soup kitchen.
“Are you new? Do you need any help?” asks Danielle, a middle-aged woman with a bright, open face. Fluently bilingual, she explains that she has found a housing arrangement as she works to conquer alcoholism and resume a career as a personal care aide. “But I still come here now and then to eat.”
In addition to the meals, the sprawling facility near the Gare du Palais provides housing, money management, literacy and job training programs for men and women in difficulty. About 5000 people use the facility’s services each year, according to executive director Eric Boulay, and that number has been rising. At the YWCA, one of the city’s few facilities for homeless women, 450 women were turned away in 2012 for lack of space. Cold weather adds to the crowding, as do rising rents. After the first cold nights, says Boulay, another peak period is July, when leases run out.
“Homelessness is not so apparent here as it is in Montreal,” says Frédéric Keck, director of the Réseau d’assistance aux itinérants et itinérantes de Québec, which connects homeless people with community services. “But there’s been a definite growth in demand here due to economic pressures.”
“There are as many ways into homelessness as there are homeless people,” says Keck. “Some people have been on the edge since their youth, are poorly educated or have addictions . . . but we also have people who have had good jobs.”
“The price of housing and the cost of living have been going up and up for the past ten years,” says Boulay. “It is easier to become homeless if you are poor or have a substance abuse problem or mental illness, but those are not the only causes. We have this vision that homeless people are somehow different than us, but more than ever, anyone can find themselves at the door of this house.”
Martin Payeur is the director of Maison Revivre, a men’s shelter in Basse-Ville. “If someone is homeless, the first thing I ask them is, ‘Tell me about your family,’” says Payeur. “Often they’ll say something like ‘I last talked to my mother about 15 years ago, I never knew my father and I think my sister is somewhere near Sherbrooke.’ When you have a tree with no roots, it falls the first time there’s a wind. If you have no one to stop drinking for, why would you stop drinking?”
A sign on Payeur’s office door reads: “It’s quite nice to be important, but it’s more important to be nice.”
Mario Gamache, a former machinist, is staying at Lauberivière. “Go ahead and use my full name, I’ve got nothing to hide anymore,” he says. He got into hard drugs after health problems forced him to stop drinking. Now he’s fighting several battles, not least with himself. “To come here, you have to confront your problems and to act, not react. I’ve been clean for 45 days, and I haven’t stayed clean that long in 15 years . . . . This place gives you a push. Before I was like, ‘My life is crap’ but now I’m learning to like me.”
Boulay says about 80 per cent of the shelter’s users are men. Women fight slightly different battles. “Women in the streets don’t want to stay there,” says Jessica Gossein, a reinsertion counselor at the YWCA who works with homeless women. “They come here as a last resort, not only because of a lack of security on the street but because they often have children with them.”
Some people, like Danielle, use the shelters only long enough to find an apartment or even for just a few hot meals.” A few stay for months or years. At Maison Revivre, Payeur says many long-term residents have made themselves indispensable, preparing meals and taking care of security or reception. “The family these guys don’t have, they find it here,” he says.
Marie-Colette, 61, has lived at the YWCA for nearly a year. She had a steady job as a driving instructor before a car accident made her unable to work. A learning disability and problems with bureaucracy made job retraining difficult. After living in progressively smaller and dirtier apartments, she ended up at the YWCA. “I heard the word ‘homeless’ and thought, ‘I’m not homeless,’” she says. “I’ve never used alcohol or drugs. I found it shocking.”
But she says the rhythm of life at the YMCA — the residents have a daily schedule of activities — is helping her get back on her feet. “I needed a little push, I needed a reason to get up in the morning and a schedule.” She also takes inspiration from her neighbours. “Compared to a recovering addict, my problems are nothing,” she says. “I remember someone who was very noisy and nervous, had a real drug problem, then went for treatment and came back. If she in her state can sort herself out, then there is no reason I can’t.”