Quebec Premier Paul St-Pierre Plamondon announced $28 million in emergency funding on Friday, October 23, in Montreal, to add more than 1,000 warming-centre and shelter places across 16 regions over the next five months, as the new Parti Québécois government moves before winter to help people living on the street.
More than 1,000 emergency places for the next five months
The one-time funding will support nearly 200 projects delivering winter emergency measures in 16 regions of Quebec, the premier’s office said. Close to $18 million is earmarked for the Montreal region, home to the largest share of the province’s unhoused population.
The new money sits on top of $18 million in aid already planned, bringing the total reserved for this year’s winter measures to $46 million.
According to the government, the added investment will create more than 1,000 extra emergency places for the coming five months. They include additional spots in warming centres — known in French as haltes-chaleur — along with emergency and transitional shelter spaces. The funding can also pay for fitting out premises, meals, and outreach services to reach people living outside.
St-Pierre Plamondon made the announcement at Accueil Bonneau, a long-established Montreal organization serving people experiencing homelessness. He was joined by Montreal Mayor Soraya Martinez Ferrada, Stéphane Paquet, the minister responsible for the metropolis, and Camille Pellerin-Forget, the minister delegate for mental health and social services.
A first announcement from a new government
The funding was the first major announcement of the new Parti Québécois government, which was sworn in on Wednesday, October 21, and forms a minority at the National Assembly. St-Pierre Plamondon also holds the homelessness file himself, after campaigning on a promise to invest $1 billion over four years to cut homelessness in half by 2030.
The premier said he has made the fight against homelessness a personal matter, arguing that a wealthy society cannot accept so many people living on the street. He said the face of homelessness has changed, it now reaches every region of Quebec, and the province faces a social crisis requiring action on several fronts at once.
Martinez Ferrada welcomed the announcement. Her city had asked Quebec for $20 million to keep people warm through the winter, while also pressing for transitional housing. The money for Montreal, at close to $18 million, lands near that request.
Not every front-line voice called it enough. CityNews reported that Diane Pilote, executive director of the Chez Doris women’s shelter organization, said the funding still does not cover all the needs her organization sees.
Why the money is needed before winter
The scale of the problem explains the rush. The Quebec government estimated that just over 12,000 people were living on the street in the province in 2025, and that about 42 per cent of them were in Montreal.
Montreal has been building its own winter capacity in parallel. On October 8, Martinez Ferrada said the city planned about 3,000 spots in emergency shelters and nine winter warming centres, open around the clock, across seven boroughs. The city bought 350 new beds after finding that, in recent winters, many people in emergency shelters had to sleep on chairs.
The danger is not abstract. Quebec’s coroner’s office has counted about 500 deaths of people experiencing homelessness since 2020, and earlier this month a woman died after a fire at an encampment in the Montréal-Nord borough. As a Toronto hospital program that is doubling housing support for homeless patients shows, emergency capacity across the country fills faster than permanent housing can be built.
Emergency aid now, a summit promised for 2027
St-Pierre Plamondon described the new funding as a first step, not a solution. A major summit on homelessness is to follow, bringing partners together to identify lasting measures and a better-coordinated response; reporting on Friday put the summit in early 2027, with a goal of halving the number of people without a home by the end of the mandate. The premier has also pointed to social housing as the longer-term answer, and the party’s commitment to 20,000 social housing units was reaffirmed around the announcement.
He did not present warming centres as that answer. Coverage of the announcement noted that he himself characterized emergency warming spaces as a band-aid on a deeper wound — necessary with winter weeks away, but not a cure for the housing shortage underneath.
The road to Friday’s announcement opened when François Legault announced his resignation as premier, setting off the change of government that brought St-Pierre Plamondon to office — a leader whose party had already rallied around his priorities at a party convention earlier this year.
For shelter operators, the immediate test is simpler than the summit agenda: whether nearly 200 projects across 16 regions can be staffed and open before the coldest nights arrive.
