Mélissa Gélinas

Several city councillors came together to lend a hand by accumulating more than $19,000 through their discretionary budgets, allowing the Sanscartier Park heating station to stay open for an extra four hours, from 4 pm to 8 pm, to accommodate the homeless.

“City councillors got together and raised $13,000, in addition to $6,000 from Denis Girouard […],” said Annie Castonguay, coordinator of the Guertin and Sanscartier Park heating station.

Thanks to the amount obtained, the heating station will now be open from 4 pm to 8 pm until April 15. “This will allow us to ensure that people in this sector are not cold during this period,” said Castonguay.

Some of the funding raised will be used to pay employees, and it will also cover some of the cost of food and hygiene kits. “This will provide a little boost to the situation, because my team, which is extraordinary, is starting to find the situation difficult since they must constantly work with a feeling of helplessness,” she explained.

Although this is good news, other priority problems on the Guertin site remain unresolved. “People are very tired because they can only sleep in two-hour stretches […],” Castonguay pointed out. In fact, every two hours, people have to go outside for 10 minutes to do a rotation. “We reduced the time spent outside from 30 minutes to 10 because of the cold,” she said.

The Guertin heating station has no beds or adequate space to sleep. Some people have to sleep on picnic tables or on the ground. “It’s not a very restorative sleep.”

According to Castonguay, it’s also a way to encourage people to go to other services such as the Gîte Ami, a community temporary shelter for people experiencing homelessness. “However, some people have limited access to the Gîte due to disruptive behaviour,” she explained. “Others simply don’t feel comfortable going there.”

“Our goal is to be a lever for change, because it’s pointless to think that it’s possible to get by staying in a heating station,” she continued. “So, we must encourage people to go to other services. However, there’s a lot of service lacking in Sanscartier. For example, there is no Gîte Ami there.”

One solution, according to Castonguay, would be the development of a permanent warming shelter including prison-type equipment facilities. “That would be my goal, my dream, to be able to offer that to people who are in difficulty,” she said.