Société de transport de Montréal, the city’s transit agency, says it will no longer tolerate loitering in Métro stations, subways and buses.
The STM is implementing an “obligation to circulate” rule to deal with the growing number of unhoused people who are essentially living in transit facilities. The measure is, in theory, temporary (to April 30) but it’s hard to imagine what will change in that short period.
There is no question that the situation in some of Montreal’s 68 metro stations has become untenable.
The entrances and hallways of the sprawling system have become a combination of open drug markets and unsupervised shelters, with dozens of people sleeping in hallways in various states of undress, smoking everything from crack to cigarettes, panhandling, urinating and defecating openly, engaging in violent confrontations and more.
Predictably, a number of social agencies have condemned the STM crackdown.
“Where are unhoused people supposed to go?” is the common refrain.
It’s a good question, with no easy answer, especially with shelters and warming centres full, and supportive housing lacking.
But the answer – in Montreal, Toronto, Vancouver, Calgary, Ottawa and many other cities struggling with this issue – is not a laissez-faire attitude in the transit system.
The STM has asked various levels of government to build more shelters, supervised consumption sites and supportive housing to ease the pressure on the transit system, and they are right to do so.
As a public agency, it has social responsibility, but not to an unlimited degree.
The role of a transit agency is to transport people. It is not unreasonable to expect those in transit facilities to travel, not sleep and drink in hallways, on benches and on buses.
No transit system should be expected to operate as a de facto combination shelter and psychiatric ward, especially when it’s scaring off its customers.
Surveys conducted by the STM show that fewer than half of transit riders feel safe riding the rails. That’s a big problem for a business that provides 288 million rides a year and still can barely remain afloat financially.
Having to spend $51-million a year on security certainly doesn’t help the bottom line.
Montreal transit cops have to escort out, on average, 92 unhoused people from stations every night when the system closes around 1 a.m. They invariably return a few hours later, when the trains begin running again.
STM transit cops deal with another 72 cases, on average, of “problematic behaviour” – meaning drinking, drug use or disruptive behaviour that is so flagrant it can no longer be ignored. When things get really serious, like stabbings and assaults, regular police officers get involved.
Then there are overdoses, accidental falls on the tracks and suicides. The STM estimates that 60 per cent of service disruptions are due to a small number of unhoused people and drug users. Again, not a trivial issue.
We won’t even mention fare evasion – jumping the turnstiles or simply ignoring the fare box to have a place to crash. That rankles fare-paying customers, and rightfully so.
People who pay their bus/subway fare should expect to ride in comfort and safety. They shouldn’t have to put up with the crap they do – literally and figuratively.
Is it cruel and heartless to say so? Perhaps. But Canadians are pathologically tolerant of the intolerable.
The public should be able to use public spaces and services, and they should do so responsibly, and it’s not wrong to say so.
Buses, subways, parks, libraries and sidewalks should not be overrun by drugs users, unhoused people and those with untreated mental illness, to the detriment of others.
The STM, while being painted as the bad guy for wanting to clean up the metro system, has actually been eminently reasonable. If anything, too tolerant.
A survey of 115 transit systems in the U.S. and Canada found that more than half of them deal with more than 100 unhoused daily people living in their networks.
There are two types of responses to this challenge: Punitive and supportive outreach. Both are necessary, but in Canada we have done little of either.
What we have seen instead is what academics call “burden shifting” – essentially kicking the problem down the road to another bureaucratic entity.
Too much of the burden has been shifted to transit agencies. “Move along” orders are not unreasonable.
But governments also have to get moving on solving the epidemic of homelessness, with large-scale housing initiatives, not by punting the unhoused to public spaces.