quebec's approach to homelessness needs to change, welcome hall mission ceo says
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if some benevolent person suddenly declared they want to open a hospital to help the sick in montreal, it would likely provoke laughter.
yet sam watts, the ceo of welcome hall mission, says that’s how the quebec government expects people experiencing homelessness to be cared for — by good-hearted people who want to help.
“i couldn’t start a hospital tomorrow morning and call it sam’s hospital. you’d laugh me out of the room,” he said, citing his lack of qualifications, the need for a team of health professionals and qualified administrators to run the place and the fact that the province, which owns such establishments, sets standards for construction and service.
“yet virtually anyone can start an organization tomorrow and deliver services to address the needs of the most vulnerable that we have.”
watts, who has spent a decade at the helm of one of montreal’s largest and oldest non-profit organizations working to end homelessness, food insecurity and social isolation, spoke to the gazette this week about his view that quebec’s approach to addressing homelessness needs to change, starting with sorting out the types of care needed and defining a role for the hospital network.
quebec considers homelessness a public health issue, which is provincial jurisdiction. watts said he agrees with that approach. still, the main role of the ciusss du centre-sud-de-l’île-de-montréal, which the province has put in charge of homelessness on montreal island, is to disburse funding to a network of non-profit community organizations that are then supposed to deliver front-line services to unhoused people.
in montreal, that network is made up of 73 non-profits, including welcome hall mission. it’s a “dysfunctional system,” watts said.
“we have to rethink how we approach the care of the most vulnerable,” he said. “and it can’t just be good-intentioned people with wonderful hearts. it needs to be that, but it can’t just be that. if we rethink the system, i don’t think that what we would conclude is that it’s ok for under-equipped, under-financed charities to be at the core of having to operate this.”
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watts notes that homelessness has grown exponentially, and so has the diversity of the people experiencing it. yet the system in quebec to assist people who are unhoused, and in many cases dealing with physical and mental health conditions, trauma and addictions, hasn’t adapted since the non-profit community sector was providing services and shelter to a far smaller clientele 50 years ago, he said.
“when you look at homelessness and the reality of homelessness as it exists today,” watts said, “the person who is 55 years old and has worked all his life and has had three or five bad things happen to him has different needs than the 22-year-old who has been in foster care for most of her life and finds herself on the outside looking in.”
welcome hall mission’s transitional housing building on ontario st. has so far placed 62 residents, who were formerly unhoused, in permanent apartments. sam watts, ceo of welcome hall mission, and supervisor koffi abalo during an interview in montreal on tuesday feb. 17, 2026.
dave sidaway
/
montreal gazette
he offered as an example an unhoused person who might be an amputee with a chronic disease like diabetes and dealing with an addiction. the community sector is expected to care for people with complex medical conditions and who are unhoused, he said.
“well, we’re not equipped to deal with many of those (complex cases),” watts said.
“i think what we need is a system that makes decisions around how do we care best for many different types of people. what we need to do is to start making decisions around what types of care need to be available. and some of that is going to involve decisions around how the hospital system works.”
watts cited the example of a toronto doctor, andrew boozary, who prescribes housing to unhoused patients and whose hospital cut the number of er visits by unhoused people after constructing a building with permanent housing for them on one of its parking lots.
watts, who was tapped this week by mayor soraya martinez ferrada to join a new group created by her administration to improve the response to homelessness in montreal, said he lauds the mayor and the city for stepping up to fill in services with winter warming shelters, and now for bringing provincial health and public health officials to the table with the city and the community network through the new group, the groupe d’intervention tactique en itinérance.
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in a reorganized system in quebec, what would be the role of an organization like welcome hall mission? watts said he sees it concentrating on what it does well: prevention, such as through the free grocery stores that welcome hall mission offers to help people stay in their apartments, and rapid re-housing for those who end up homeless, notably with its growing inventory of transitional residences.
by watts’s reckoning, the majority of unhoused people “are fairly easy to get back into housing. what you see on the streets are the more difficult, challenging cases.”
what is needed most is upstream prevention to have fewer people becoming homeless, he said, and downstream rapid re-housing.
“if you’re doing both of those things, then the emergency services in the middle will be limited to those … complex cases that really require extensive medical intervention, which is best handled by hospitals and similar facilities.”
welcome hall mission’s transitional housing building on ontario st. has so far placed 62 residents, who were formerly unhoused, in permanent apartments.
dave sidaway
/
montreal gazette
watts invited the gazette to tour welcome hall mission’s newest transitional housing project at 2222 ontario st. e., offering it as a success story in re-housing in just 10 months of existence. since it opened in may 2025 for a specific clientele — unhoused people who are motivated to return to stable, independent housing — welcome hall mission has already placed 62 now-formerly unhoused people in apartments.
the current average stay in the building’s studios is 25 days, according to program supervisor koffi abalo. potential candidates for 2222, as the building is known, must have a revenue, whether it’s welfare or a salaried job. they are unhoused, abalo said, but some work in warehouses, construction and fast food or are enrolled in a training program.
they also have to express a commitment to finding an apartment. a selection committee interviews applicants to get into the building.
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“the best moment is when they leave to go to their new apartment and they thank us,” abalo said. “there are a lot of stories.”
the building, which is kept spotlessly clean, offers 50 studios — 42 for men and eight that are separated for women, with space available for couples. their ages have ranged from 19 to 83 years old so far. one couple came directly from an encampment when the woman was four months pregnant, abalo said. he and his team helped the couple visit apartments and helped them move in. she gave birth last week.
welcome hall mission purchased the building, the former home of the boîte à musique, for $4 million in 2024 and renovated its more than 12,000 square feet of space for $4 million out of its own pocket within nine months. the province guaranteed in early 2025 a subsidy of $4 million, to which the city of montreal will add $1.6 million, but the provincial cheque still hasn’t arrived, watts noted.
because of its focus on short-term stays, the building differs from other transitional housing run by welcome hall mission, where the stay can be as long as three years. residents in these other transitional residences are at various stages in their process toward re-housing.
watts noted that montreal city executive committee chairperson claude pinard has said the martinez ferrada administration wants to see 2,000 additional transitional housing units built in this mandate.
concrete solutions like 2222 ontario are pieces of the puzzle, watts said. but there’s an urgency to organizing the system and other solutions, he said.
in the meantime, burnout is a growing problem for the community sector that is trying to respond to the homelessness crisis.
“burnout doesn’t typically happen because you have too much work,” watts said. “it happens because you feel the work that you’re doing isn’t getting you anywhere. … it’s because we’re contributing to a system that was established in the 1970s to do work that was suitable in the 1970s. but here we are in 2026 with a different set of problems, a different set of complexities.”
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