Montreal women’s shelters raise alarm over lack of beds for homeless women

Couture said the government provides extra funding for shelters in winter months due to the danger of letting women sleep outside in the cold, but in the summer the organization can only maintain emergency services, leaving only a few beds available.

“Yes, the cold is the enemy for everyone, but assaults and violence are even worse in the spring,” she said.

Marcele Lamarche, the general director of a housing service for women in difficulty, agreed there is a lack of short and long-term housing in the city.

The organization she leads, Le Chainon, currently houses 66 women and doesn’t have the capacity to take in any more.

She said women’s homelessness differs from men’s and needs its own solutions.

While new grants would be welcome, she argued there also needs to be a better distribution of resources between the various organizations that help women.

“Before developing new resources, I need first to be subsidized to the level of what I am currently doing,” she said, noting government funding makes up only eight per cent of her organization’s budget.

Lamarche also claimed in an open letter she co-authored earlier this year that women’s organizations receive fewer resources and less funding than those designed for men.

“In the Montreal of 2018, which for the first time has a woman as (mayor), it’s scandalous that a health and social service is financed differently dependent on whether the users are men and women,” the letter said.

Vicky Fragasso-Marquis and Louis Cloutier, The Canadian Press

by Canadian Press

Montreal women’s shelters raise alarm over lack of beds for homeless women

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