Temporary loitering ban ends in Montreal Metro

Montreal’s transit agency has lifted its controversial loitering ban, which mostly impacted the homeless and will now undergo review.

The Société de transport de Montréal (STM) has ended its temporary loitering ban in Montreal’s Metro stations.

The measure, established in mid-March, was set to expire on April 30.

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“We will be taking the time to look at the data we are currently collecting, and will be presenting our analysis in the coming weeks, first to our board and then publicly,” Laurence Houde-Roy, an STM corporate advisor, tells CTV News. “We will also be meeting with homeless organizations as part of our post-mortem.”

The ban was put in place to curb what the public transit agency has called a sharp increase in the number of people with substance abuse and mental health difficulties.

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At the time, Montreal Mayor Valérie Plante pointed out that “the STM’s primary role is to transport people and maintain a safe, functional transit network for everyone. The measures being announced today are difficult — heartbreaking, even — but they are necessary.”

She added that, in recent times, STM employees have been forced to clean up human waste and contaminated syringes.

Plante stated that businesses with locations along the Metro network were also being negatively affected.

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Friday, the STM confirmed that security officers will continue to patrol the stations, “always with a view of referring vulnerable people to the appropriate resources.”

“We would like to reiterate that what we want first and foremost is for long-term measures to be put in place,” Houde-Roy said. “Particularly in view of the coming winter period, so that anyone in need of housing or health resources can have access to them, while limiting the impact on STM customers and employees.”

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The STM states it won’t be conducting interviews on the subject until its analysis is complete.

‘A very problematic situation’

Saint Michael’s Mission tells CTV News it is currently in discussions with the STM on ways to help prevent the agency from taking such drastic measures in the future.

“We passed through the Metro ourselves, and we definitely noticed a dramatic effect on the presence of people there,” said Andrew Marrocco, executive director at Saint Michael’s Mission. “Some of the people who were coming to our shelter, both who had already been coming to our shelter and who weren’t coming before, were actually in great distress because in this situation, one of their living spaces had been taken away from them.”

Marrocco notes that the Mission usually sees 100 to 125 individuals each day, but in the weeks following the loitering ban, numbers rose to 180.

“Our numbers were already meeting capacity,” he said. “But we surpassed our previous records by about 20-25 per cent of different individuals passing through the shelter, which, when you’re already at capacity, that’s a very significant increase.”

Marrocco points out that taking away potential shelters from people in vulnerable conditions is “very destabilizing,” and more needs to be done to address the root causes of how and why people end up without a home, while supporting organizations that already exist.