Gatineau to invest $5 million for their homelessness action plan in 2025

Sophie Demers 

During the second day of the city’s budget discussions last week, Gatineau presented the action plan for homelessness and social development for 2025-2029. The proposed plan details a $24,028,235 investment over the next five years. For 2025, the city plans to invest $4,997,394. 

According to city documents, Gatineau aims to demonstrate strong leadership in fighting homelessness and social development where all residents have a good quality of life and are put at the centre of all actions. 

The plan details six categories for achieving their goals. 

1. Governance: This includes the creation of a municipal team dedicated to the issue of homelessness and social development, an action plan with community organizations, allocating resources and establishment of an interdepartmental committee. In 2025, $3,050,000 of the budget will be allocated to this.

1. Targeted communication: Next year, $286,500 of the budget will be allocated to raising awareness with residents, stimulating the interest of organizations and project promoters in developing related initiatives, and improving communication. 

1. Research, consultation, and partnerships: This category represents a $415,000 investment to strengthen partnerships with community organization and municipal services and optimize support for organizations through the Community Development Support Framework. 

1. A roof for everyone: Of the total budget for homelessness, $1,325,000 will go toward increasing the construction of housing such as affordable, transitional, and emergency housing, and contributing to access to housing. 

1. Interventions: Largely, this entails supporting various programs, managing encampments, implementing frameworks for managing encampment operations and makeshift camps. 

1. Neighbourhood life and community development: This involves encouraging the development of links between community centres, local associations, and social development committees, and supporting citizen access to infrastructure, and encouraging civic participation. This category also involves supporting healthy-living environment initiatives, supporting community partners’ initiatives in public and active transportation, and integrating community development approaches to public spaces and city infrastructure. 

The homelessness crisis has been an ongoing issue with the city for many years. At almost every council meeting, there is a resident addressing the council on the topic. There was always a lot of discussion on the fact that homelessness is a provincial issue being pushed on municipalities. Some councillors feel that investing this amount excuses Quebec from its responsibility. Despite most councillors agreeing that Quebec should be supporting cities in fighting homelessness, the proposals to reduce the amount budgeted were rejected. 

While the initial plan was kept after going to a vote, a few expressed their disagreement with the approach. Jocelyn Blondin stated that he doesn’t believe that the way the city is going about it will help get people experiencing homelessness out of their situation. “I don't think that what we are doing now is really a solution to help them in the long term. I have learned over the years that if you want to help someone get by, it's not by giving them fish; it's by giving them a fishing rod and showing them how to fish. So, I'm looking for other things in the movement we are doing to really help them get by,” said Blondin. 

Mike Duggan, Pointe-Gatineau councillor, stated that the five-year commitment relieves the province from their responsibilities for too long, suggesting that the plan outline be for one or two years instead. 

“If we don't take responsibility, if we don't fill the void left by our provincial government, who's going to do it?” said Daniel Champagne, Versant councillor and president of the housing committee. “We're probably going to find ourselves in much worse situations over the next few years. So, I recognize that it's elsewhere that we should invest those sums. (4:27) I totally agree with that. But our reality is very different.

Steve Moran, President of the executive committee, echoed this, stating, “The sums we allocated, will not be able to meet the needs on the ground. The needs are beyond this defined by the community and by the City of Gatineau. We are doing this to meet our budgetary capacity.” He highlights that if the city doesn’t budget these sums, it will be spent anyway due to community needs and management of encampments.