2024-04-22 23:30:00
Businesses, homelessness, drugs: nothing has improved in the village where residents and merchants expect another hot summer despite the city’s revitalization efforts.
• Also read: Crack use is exploding in Montreal… and we will see more and more of it in public places
• Also read: “Bigger challenges”: Montreal wants to do more for the village sector and Place Émilie-Gamelin
• Also read: “People no longer want to come to the village, they are afraid”
“It’s getting out of hand. Before, when I left my house to go to the grocery store, I had to change streets once. Now there are four or five cases of people attacking us or scaring us a little in half an hour,” sums up Daniel Matte, who has lived in the neighborhood for five years.
The former press officer in the publishing industry has been involved in the village’s new residents’ association for several months.
At 11 in the evening, near the Berri metro station, he already saw a man with a metal rod threatening to beat everyone.
Only in the apartment on the 14th floor does he feel safe.
The Beaudry Metro, a “prick shop”
“Beaudry metro station has become a pit. It is injected on the benches, at any time in the morning or in the evening, laments director François Bergeron of the Centre-Sud Community Corporation.
Faced with the increase in homelessness and drug use, community organizations do not have more resources, he laments.
A homeless person sleeps on the park bench behind Beaudry subway station.
Picture Anouk Lebel
The Ville-Marie district has launched an “interesting” mobilization to revitalize the sector, but Quebec is lacking, according to him.
“There are many homeless people and drug users. The second time we had to call the police because someone was sleeping right in front of our window, explains Seung Han Kim, who is preparing to open a Korean restaurant with his father.
Kiltae Kim and Seung Han Kim notice that there are many homeless people and drug users around their future Korean restaurant. Even before the opening, they had called the police.
Picture Anouk Lebel
Enterprises undertaken
On the eve of the pedestrian street of Rue Sainte-Catherine Est for the summer, many businesses are set up. Some are covered in graffiti.
Picture Anouk Lebel
“There is more police presence, but there is not more security. There are still so many homeless people and drug addicts, says the new owner of the Aigle Noir bar, Alexandre Lacerte Grondin.
He plans to pay one or two employees to keep the patio safe this summer.
“As soon as we turn our backs, they steal glasses from the terrace,” testifies the waiter at a neighboring restaurant, who did not want to be identified.
Police officers frustrated
Neighborhood Post 22, which serves the village, declined our interview request.
But the rudeness in the Village is known to the police union.
“We are unable to ensure security and a sense of security when we know that the problems will increase with the arrival of summer. It’s frustrating,” commented the president of the police fraternity, Yves Francoeur.
With Olivier Faucher
1713832177
#homelessness #drugs #degenerate #village