There's been a change. One of the main causes is evictions. That's why people are ending up on the streets.
A count was done not that long ago. The number of unhoused individuals in Quebec—people visibly without housing—is the same as the number of people living in Bromont. About 12,000 people, spread across Quebec, are experiencing visible homelessness.
That said, they may have been experiencing hidden homelessness before that. That's something else that has changed. People exhaust their options. They are no longer couchsurfing or living in someone's basement. Now, they are forced to camp outside quite involuntarily.
I think that a growing number of people like these are ending up on the street. Once, they had a place to go, they had a social safety net, but it developed more and more holes. We have to equip that safety net with multiple layers of support. Once we've helped them get housing, people need access to an adequate income, health care, food, transportation and safety.
In the long run, a kind of deterioration can occur on several levels. People end up stretching their budgets to the limit. A minor setback sometimes forces them to take in a roommate. At some point, they lose their apartment.
We did a count and it produced quantitative statistics. The qualitative data are coming a bit later this fall, and then we will be able to see why people become unhoused, where they were before and what was going on.
That said, even with the data we have, which dates back to 2022, we already know that things have changed. We perceive a kind of gradual exhaustion. For some, it's almost like torture. Eventually, they reach a breaking point and, unfortunately, they temporarily end up on the street.
Living in a car is never easy. Fady Dagher, now chief of police with Montreal's Service de police de la Ville de Montréal—and previously chief of police for Longueuil—went to spend the night with unhoused persons for a few days. He said that after two or three days, he, a person healthy in mind and body, slowly began experiencing mental health problems. Homelessness wears down even those who start out perfectly stable. The experience leaves them with multiple traumas, and makes them harder to help.
So the goal is to be able to catch people early on. The profiles have changed. We are going to learn a few more details about the nature of these changes, but there's a kind of distress that pulls people closer and closer to the streets. Unfortunately, it's getting easier to end up in these extreme situations.