Montreal will set up nine new warming centres across seven boroughs, part of the city’s winter plan to help homeless people get through this coming winter.
The centres will be in Rosemont–La Petite-Patrie, Ville-Marie, the Plateau, LaSalle, Verdun, Ahuntsic-Cartierville and Saint-Laurent.
“I won’t leave anybody in the street to die from the cold,” said Montreal Mayor Soraya Martinez Ferrada. “That’s my promise. So whatever we need to do, we’ll do it.”
The city says those new centres will bring Montreal’s emergency and transitional shelter spaces to 3,000. Most of the new sites will be equipped with beds, the city says.
“You heard the word transitional housing over and over again,” said Sam Watts, the president and CEO of the Welcome Hall Mission. “That is really the solution to get people to a point where they’re in a process where they’re going back into permanent housing rather than a whole series of emergency measures, which are very costly.”
Watts says relying on emergency services can cost around $95,000 per person each year compared with between $15,000 and $40,000 to house someone, depending on the level of care they need.
“More people are falling into homelessness than we’re capable of helping get back into housing,” he said. “And that’s in a situation where we’re housing more people than we ever have.”
As winter approaches, people who have experienced homelessness say the new warming centres are welcome, but they want to know whether the services will be enough.
“Even though you may have new warming centres, you don’t want to go to a place that’s not safe or that you’re going to feel not healthy about yourself,” said Keekee, a client at Resilience Montreal.
“I think the staff has to be tolerable of the needs of their clients. Sometimes I’ve found in the past that they still have judgments and they may have their own ideas about certain things.”
The announcement comes one day after a 50-year-old woman died following a fire at a homeless encampment in Montreal North. The cause of the fire and the circumstances surrounding her death remain under investigation.
Mayor Martinez Ferrada called the death a tragic reminder of the need to act on homelessness.
It was the second death of a homeless person in Quebec this week. On Monday, a 59-year-old man died in Granby after being found unconscious behind a commercial building.
The Martinez Ferrada administration says it needs funding for the services required to operate the new warming shelters. It’s requesting $20 million per year from the Quebec government for “predictable, sustainable funding.”
That funding would allow the warming centres to be open 24 hours a day, seven days a week.
“I really do hope that this is the last winter that will be waiting for funding, knowing that the winter comes every year,” the mayor said.
“The request by the mayor is perfectly reasonable,” said James Hughes, the former president of the Old Brewery Mission who is now the Quebec Liberal Party MNA-elect for Vaudreuil. “It’s in line with what was asked last year. So I would expect given that it is a priority of the new government that they will be confirming funding.”
Reacting to the encampment death, Quebec Premier-designate Paul St-Pierre Plamondon said his new administration will provide emergency funding for shelters and winter warming spaces.
“As premier, I am making the fight against homelessness a personal matter,” he wrote on X. “It will be our priority as a government to intervene.”
“We will act decisively to prevent this kind of tragic event from happening again,” he added.
Une femme en situation d’itinérance est décédée cette nuit. Je tiens à offrir mes plus sincères condoléances à ses proches et à sa famille.
Comme premier ministre, je fais de la lutte à l’itinérance une affaire personnelle. Ce sera notre priorité comme gouvernement d’intervenir.
J’ai annoncé que des budgets d’urgence seront rendus disponibles à court terme. L’hiver est à nos portes et on doit être prêt. Ces ressources devront notamment servir à de l’hébergement d’urgence et de refuge pour l’hiver.
On va agir résolument pour éviter que ce genre d’événement tragique ne se reproduise.
Bien sûr, nous aurons aussi des solutions pour le logement à long terme.
https://t.co/2LyrsO03y6
— Paul St-Pierre Plamondon (@PaulPlamondon) October 7, 2026
Hughes says the provincial government really needs to act as quickly as possible.
“It just got elected on Monday, so no one’s expecting them to answer every question about the homelessness file in the shortest possible time, in a matter of days. For sure, though, it’s got to be in the next few weeks that they respond to this request,” he said.
The plan also comes as the city faces another housing challenge in Montreal’s East End.
The city is seeking to close the Résidence Bellerive in Pointe-aux-Trembles, a 122-room building currently providing low-cost housing to vulnerable tenants. A court ordered the building’s tenants to be evicted within a year, but that decision is currently under appeal.
“I want to make very clear that under our administration, no one is going to be on the street from this building,” Mayor Martinez Ferrada said.
“And we are going to be working with the owner and making sure that we find sustainable solutions.”
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