Quebec’s struggling churches are finding new life as homeless shelters |
Église Saint-Roch is an imposing Catholic church in Quebec City named for the patron saint of outcasts. It’s both a city heritage site and the beating heart of a vibrant neighbourhood at the crossroads of working-class history and gentrification. Fittingly, it’s also home to Le Répit Basse-Ville (“the Lower Town respite”), a day centre for homeless people and others with nowhere else to go.
In a garage-like but well-lit room in the church’s labyrinthine basement, outreach worker James Herrera is everywhere at once, listening to one man vent, charging another’s battered phone and tidying the kitchen before a group of nuns arrive with food. “Every day is different,” he says with a cheerful shrug. “When people get too upset, we tell them to take a walk and come back. There are conflicts, but people are happy to be here, so they make it work.”
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Église Saint-Roch has hosted this day shelter since at least 2000. That year, a nearby shopping mall called the Mail Saint-Roch was demolished, leaving unhoused people with nowhere to hang out during the day. A partnership emerged between Église Saint-Roch and a local outreach organization, and a “rec centre for homeless people,” as one person describes it, was born.
The day shelter was a much-loved neighbourhood spot for two decades. But when the pandemic hit in 2020, it brought rampant inflation, a worsening housing crisis, evictions, closures of other gathering places and — critically — a more toxic drug supply. Suddenly, a far more vulnerable and unpredictable clientele was knocking at the door.
The day shelter’s outreach staff were then recalled to a larger city shelter nearby, and the coalition of community organizations that replaced them struggled to meet the growing demand for service. Some parishioners — particularly seniors — no longer felt safe around the church and stopped attending mass. Complaints from businesspeople and residents of a nearby public housing complex mounted, as did damage to the church building, which the struggling parish could ill afford to repair.
In June 2022, the parish ended its partnership with the coalition, suspended shelter operations and appealed for help. Knowing the city didn’t want the service to be interrupted, the parish gave municipal officials an ultimatum: take ownership of the shelter or face its permanent closure. “We decided we could only [continue to] rent the space if the city got involved,” remembers Nicolas Marcil, general manager of the parish. “They were the only ones solid enough to deal with this.”
Quebec churches have long helped people experiencing homelessness in the province. But with churches closing and falling into disrepair, many are unable to continue to serve in this way. Outreach organizations are stepping into the gap, often operating from deconsecrated or underused church buildings. As charities, however, they too struggle to meet both the demands of the unhoused and the high costs of building maintenance. “The church teaches that we should help the poor, but we need to do it in a balanced way,” Marcil says. Meanwhile, church buildings are disappearing from the landscape as the number of homeless people soars.
A new pilot at Église Saint-Roch may be the answer to saving Quebec’s historic church buildings while providing shelter to those in need. It involves municipal government funding and support — in partnership with the church and an outreach organization. And its success is beginning to draw attention around the province.
The men Herrera greeted at Église Saint-Roch that day were hardly the first Quebecers to seek safety and a listening ear inside a church. The Roman Catholic Church was at the centre of community life, medical care and education in Quebec from the early days of French colonization until well within living memory. In the 1960s and ’70s,........