Among the many sights and sounds of spring in Val-d’Or, the annual reemergence of homeless encampments for the city’s growing itinerant population has become one of them.
But, this should come as no surprise because if an individual finds himself down and out in Val-d’Or and a suffering from a substance-abuse problem, come springtime there is nowhere else to go but the streets as the overnight shelter, Le Dortoir, closes in April and very few other resources are available.
This can lead to problems, particularly for homeless Aboriginals who have a much higher profile and therefore much more stigmatized.
In March, the francophone media had a firestorm over an incident involving two homeless Aboriginals who went into a store and stole some merchandise that they were planning to resell. As a result the owner was traumatized and wrote a letter to the papers describing her ordeal and the perpetrators. While race relations in Val-d’Or are at the best of times somewhat tense, the incident underlined how adding homelessness to the mix makes for bad bedfellows.
“They frightened the woman who owned the store. I understand that. It was two intoxicated Native people who did this and so it creates a sense of insecurity to see a big-city reality in a small town. This situation is heightened because of the increased number of Aboriginal people who are homeless. The configuration of Val-d’Or’s downtown strip makes it so much more visible,” explained Edith Cloutier, Executive Director of the Val-d’Or Native Friendship Centre (VDNFC).
According to Cloutier, incidents like these are bound to happen because the services are at a bare minimum, even though there is a social structure in place that could provide aid for these individuals. The VDNFC has stepped up and provides frontline workers. At the same time, a new building is under construction to provide shelter for these homeless individuals. But all this isn’t enough.
In Cloutier’s opinion, while homelessness shouldn’t be regarded solely as an Aboriginal issue as there are Non-Natives on the streets as well, getting all of the Aboriginal partners involved would be the best strategy for now.
“We’re at the point where we need our own leadership – Cree leadership and Algonquin leadership – to get involved because they are absent in this dynamic. We are all a community and what I hear from the leadership is that they represent the people of their nation no matter where they live. So we need to sit down and have a very honest discussion about this reality,” said Cloutier.
According to Stéphane Grenier, President of La Piaule (a local shelter) and director of the Master’s program in Social Work at l’Université du Québec en Abitibi-Témiscamingue, tensions are growing between the homeless and Val-d’Or’s general population as both groups become more familiar with each other, partially out of racial prejudice but also out of fear.
“Unfortunately, the problem is not with white homeless people in the street, the problem is with Aboriginal homeless people. A drunk guy in the street like me is funny, a drunk Cree in the street is not. That’s why the people are afraid of them,” said Grenier.
With the lack of vacancies in Val-d’Or and the lack of services for these individuals, what ends up happening is that the homeless literally have nowhere to go and end up in the downtown area. Despite this, Grenier will be closing Le Dortoir for the season by the end of April and besides a shower and a sandwich from time to time at La Piaule, no other resources will be offered to these individuals.
“For four years now we have been operating Le Dortoir, and what can I say is that it has become a social need. That doesn’t mean that it’s a social need for six months, it’s a social need for the year. We need a larger team to run it. We need maybe a day centre or a drop-in centre for this population.
“I’ve told everybody: the problem is that they’re walking around drunk in the streets. We need a place, when they are too drunk and the people are afraid of them, to bring them to like a drop-in centre. There we will take care of them and help them sleep it off,” said Grenier.
When the Nation last reported on this subject in 2010, the issue was that Grenier had not been able to find a location to house the Le Dortoir shelter and he needed additional funding so that the new La Piaule building could include the shelter.
Having successfully raised the necessary $3 million for the new building that will house both facilities, Grenier is now faced with another challenge – finding the funding to actually run both operations. Though he already has what he needs for the shelter for the sober homeless, it is Le Dortoir once again that doesn’t have sufficient funding when it comes to staff.
So, whereas Grenier says he can open new beds for the homeless, particularly for those who are inebriated and difficult to care for, without an additional $300,000 in operational funding, the new Le Dortoir won’t see its September grand opening.
Augmenting the budget for these facilities is easier said than done. While Aboriginals certainly do make up a percentage of the clientele, they don’t make up all of the clientele.
Grenier said that approaching the Aboriginal communities is a possibility, but some communities have the means to help their own people in Val-d’Or.
Research previously done on homelessness in the region showed that some of the individuals who end up on the streets in Val-d’Or are there because they are fleeing situations on their own reserves where housing is scarce or because their social scenario has become too difficult. Without anywhere else to go they seek refuge in Val-d’Or because it is the first city they hit on the way south.
“I would prefer that they invest in their own community to stop people from coming to Val-d’Or, so it would be better,” said Grenier.
“A part of the solution is the provincial government. They should have new ways to work with First Nations and to give them more access to social services. Another part of the solution is with the federal government, they should also invest. In Val-d’Or, we are not on the map of homelessness in Canada because the vacancy data that is being used is from 2000 and back then there were no homeless people here.”
Rewind to 2000 and Val-d’Or was actually having issues unloading homes as employment in the area had dried up. Twelve years on and now the community has the lowest vacancy rate in the entire country.
And so despite the fact that Grenier’s books show that he helped 230 different people at Le Dortoir and an additional 312 at La Piaule over the course of a year, the organization can’t get more than $150,000 to operate annually.
A weekly report dated February 27 that Grenier shared with the Nation shows that Le Dortoir helped six non-Natives, 20 Algonquins and 13 Crees. Despite these records, Grenier said the l’Agence de la santé et des services sociaux won’t take his funding requests seriously, insisting that the numbers are far fewer than he claims.
“Our problem is with the agency. They are just starting to believe that there is a problem in the streets of Val-d’Or. They don’t want to see that there are homeless people. They have got the same statistics as you, but they say that no, it’s more like 12-13 people who are really homeless in Val-d’Or and the others are just Aboriginal people who sleep here in the street,” said Grenier.
Grenier said the agency gives him a hard time about his numbers because his clientele is Aboriginal. It is their belief that all of these individuals can simply go back to their home communities and are therefore not homeless.
Grenier said he keeps being told that the agency will deal with the problem but that they need more numbers, statistics and studies done on the issue. At the same time he is also being told that they simply don’t have the funding for the project.
As long as Grenier gets the funding so that the service delivery can begin, that is all that matters to him.
Looking at the situation from a political angle, Romeo Saganash, a Cree from Waswanipi and the region’s MP, said he sees the need for more services for the homeless. He says providing for these individuals is everyone’s responsibility.
“One of the things that should happen in the near future is to get all the political municipal actors together and address this issue. We need to sit down, discuss it and see what we can do,” said Saganash.
Saganash said he sees this problem on a daily basis. The building where his riding office is located attracts many homeless individuals looking for shelter and they are often hanging out near the entrance and hallway.
In his opinion, this issue needs immediate attention as it is still a relatively new phenomenon, not having existed just five years ago. It is his concern that the situation will only worsen without immediate action.
“It’s a shared responsibility. The province has a role to play, the federal government has a role to play, and the Aboriginal communities have a role to play in all of this. This is not solely Val-d’Or’s issue. All the different levels of government have come together and deal with it,” said Saganash.
Only time will tell how well these bodies will work in partnership to help some of society’s most vulnerable individuals.
