A not so new
year for hookers

After a bizarre and short-lived pre-holiday
media hysteria, Hochelaga’s prostitutes are
still out in the cold

ANY GIRLS HERE? Ontario E.

by PATRICK LEJTENYI

When the local media all of a sudden discovered via a concerned citizens’ Facebook page last month that there was street-level prostitution carried out—in broad daylight! in the East-End!! near a school!!!—the outcry was predictable. Teeth were gnashed and chests pounded about Hochelaga-Maisonneuve’s spiralling mutation into some kind of grim Hogarthian cesspit of depravity, and then moved on to fuzzier holiday stories. A month to the day later, not a lot has changed on the ground, except that the two women who founded the Facebook page in question, Prostitution en plain jour (Hochelaga-Maisonneuve), have gone into media hiding, and the 523-member page has been taken over by tiresome back-and-forth comments.

The sudden hue and cry about street hookers, many of whom are IV-drug users and addicts, is hardly a new story. Several organizations contacted by the Mirror expressed a resigned bemusement vis-à-vis the spiking interest, and said the issue has been around for at least 15 years, if not longer. “It’s the level of tolerance around it that changes from year to year,” says Luc Morin, the executive director of Dopamine, a Hochelaga-based drug addict outreach group. The complaints come from both newer, more upscale residents and the older, generally less wealthy ones, he says.

In crisis with nowhere to go

Few will argue that having nodding or cracked out prostitutes on your street corner is a desirable thing. But Émilie Laliberté, of the sex workers’ rights group Stella, says the women are there mostly because they have nowhere else to go. The neighbourhood, she and others say, is woefully lacking in resources for addicts, especially shelters where they can spend the night. Most of the shelters in Montreal won’t let in people who are obviously intoxicated from either drugs or alcohol, so users have to crash on the streets or in crack houses or shooting galleries.

“We’ve found that an important need that is not being met is a 24-hour crisis centre,” says Laliberté. “These women might be out on the street on three- or four-day binges at a time, and they can’t find a place in a shelter.”

Morin concurs. “The problem is, we meet with these girls but we have only a few resources available,” he says. “The problems they have aren’t only addiction. There is also nutrition, housing, education, child protection services if they are mothers.”

And of course money, or lack of same. “A welfare cheque gives you maybe $550 a month,” says Morin. “There aren’t that many apartments available at that price any more. Fifteen years ago, when Dopamine started, the situation was similar, but in my opinion, the socio-economic situation for many of these people has deteriorated.”

Patience for solutions

But Hochelaga-Maisonneuve is above all else a residential neighbourhood, and the vast majority of its residents are not sex workers nor drug addicts. They are not thrilled about the world’s oldest profession being plied on their doorstep, and Morin and Laliberté say they can sympathize.

Stella, Dopamine and municipal urban security agency Tandem Montréal have held regular meetings with residents’ representatives, the police and political leaders like Mercier-Hochelaga-Maisonneuve borough mayor Réal Ménard and PQ MNA Carole Poirier. They’ve done a needle clean-up blitz (when they found a grand total of 30 needles, fewer than similar actions in other neighbourhoods, says Laliberté) and are planning another one, and have distributed 5,000 flyers over two days asking johns to be more discreet. Morin says local political leadership is more sympathetic than it has ever been, but that even Ménard has his limits on what is permissible and what isn’t. All the stakeholders promise to be at a borough council meeting next Tuesday, Jan. 19 at the Maison de la culture Maisonneuve (2929 Jeanne-D’Arc, 7 p.m.) to discuss the issue further.

In the meantime, Laliberté suggests residents try a little neighbourliness. “As we told the two women who started the Facebook group—and we do believe they aren’t out to hurt the women, they do have a social conscience—if they had some sort of contact with them, just saying hello, that can create a link. Then they can ask them to work a couple of blocks away from the school, and [the prostitutes] will usually be understanding.”

Stella’s position urges the full decriminalization of brothels and bawdy houses and the creation of safe injection sites for IV drug users. But until then, everyone, including concerned parents and even their kids, will have to learn to deal with the situation.

“You can’t protect kids from reality too much,” she says. “You have to teach them about the world.”