Rise in number of unhoused people seeking shelter in Montreal ERs as temperatures dip

MONTREAL — Montreal health authorities say a growing number of people experiencing homelessness are taking refuge in the city’s emergency rooms to stay out of the freezing cold.

Pierre Hajek, who has no fixed address, says he has gone to the emergency room at the city’s downtown superhospital, known as the CHUM, five or six times this winter to warm up during the night. He said he had a stable place to sleep during the winter last year.

“Let’s say there’s no room in here and you’re fed up. You’re freezing cold … so you just go there, put yourself in line like you would have something to see the doctor (for),” Hajek said Friday inside the Old Brewery Mission, an organization that services the city’s homeless.

After a warmer-than-normal New Year’s Eve, temperatures in the Montreal area are forecast to drop as low as -16 C over the weekend.

Hajek said he goes to the CHUM’s ER, a few blocks away from the Old Brewery, for a chance to warm up rather than consult a physician about a health issue. “They don’t know that I’m there to warm myself up so they treat me as a patient,” he said.

The CHUM has seen a rise in cases like Hajek’s. “Like many hospitals, the CHUM, and more specifically its emergency staff, is faced with an increase in the number of homeless people during periods of extreme cold,” it said in a statement Friday.

The regional health authority for Montreal’s southwest has noted the same trend. It said in an email that the Notre-Dame hospital “like other hospitals in the Montreal region … is facing an increase in the number of homeless people in its emergency services, particularly during periods of extreme cold.”

In response to the rise in homeless people in the city’s ERs, both the McGill University Health Centre and the CHUM said they have deployed more social workers and security to assist unhoused people and direct them to the services they need.

Marie-Pier Therrien, communications director at the Old Brewery Mission, said the shelter has noted a “significant increase in the last few months” in calls from the CHUM about unhoused people in the ER, mostly at night after metro stations close and warming shelters fill up.

“What I’ve heard from our teams is mainly (that) when the metro station closes, when all the other options are full, this is when the ERs will see an increase, but there’s probably also a small portion of people using it at any time of the day,” she said, adding they may be hearing more from the superhospital than in previous years because of the newly deployed social workers.

Montreal’s shelters and warming stations are at maximum capacity, with the mission turning away an average of 50 people each night this winter, which leaves many unhoused people with nowhere to go to stay warm, she said.

But, ultimately, providing someone with a temporary roof or place to warm up for a few hours will not solve the problem, she said.

“What they want is housing,” Therrien said. “That’s our wish for 2025. We need to have clear trajectories for those people living in public spaces, to help them access housing without going through the traditional emergency shelter system.”

This report by The Canadian Press was first published Jan. 3, 2025.

Joe Bongiorno, The Canadian Press