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Snapshots of the city's five poorest neighbourhoods With spring in the air and talk of economic rejuvenation in the news, it's easy to forget that hard times prevail in many Montreal areas. The things many people say they like about Montreal--cheap rent, cheap beer, the overall ability to live on the cheap--are only a reflection of the city's generalized poor living standards. Living with little money is part of what defines Montreal. For students and young professionals, the lack of money is usually temporary; in many areas of the city, however, the lack of money is far more chronic. And the face of poverty changes considerably depending on where it is located. With the help of statistics compiled by the City of Montreal, the Mirror takes stock and provides snapshots of the five bleakest 'hoods in the city. 5. Sovereignty's poverty: Maisonneuve
Average income: $15,652 Quote: "The area is poor, but it's not so bad. We've lost hundreds of jobs, but we're creating new ones bit by bit. We have metro stations. And with so many unemployed, there's no shortage of labour for businesses who relocate here." --city councillor Richer Dompierre, a member of the local Optimists' Club
The signs of joblessness loom large in Maisonneuve. The waterfront is monopolized by ports, docks, cranes, warehouses and railroad tracks--most abandoned. Harel's political longevity in the area is due in part to the way she runs her constituency office: her employees are like social workers, receiving 2,000 calls and 400 walk-in visits each month, helping people deal with their welfare agent, submit their UI claim, find cheap housing, apply for a government grant or anything else that helps people continue living hand-to-mouth. One political observer explained Maisonneuve's sovereignist leanings like so: "Every time there's a referendum, all the magnates from Westmount and Outremont go on TV and say, 'If you vote yes, you will lose everything you have.' But in Maisonneuve and the east end, people don't have anything to begin with. When they see that on TV, to them it means the Westmount and Outremont people will lose what they have. And they are the ones who took all the jobs out of the area. Voting yes is Maisonneuve's way of exacting revenge." --Philip Preville 4. It takes a Village: The city's gay 'hood
Average income: $15,256 Quote: "I have never regretted a move as much as this one. I don't particularly like going for a walk; there are people shooting up all over the place." --new Village resident, who recently migrated with his roommate from the Plateau
But Suzanne Girard, an organizer of Montreal's annual pride celebration Divers/Cité, says things have actually improved considerably since she was a Village resident in the '70s. "Some streets didn't even have hot running water then," she says. "There were a lot of bike gangs and thugs there. They didn't know we were lesbians. They thought we were whores, and used to paint that on our door." According to Girard, the queer influx into the area can be thanked for the "amazingly improved living standards" that have taken place over the past two decades. City lore has it that urban planners consciously harassed gays east from their former neighbourhood (the epicentre of which was St-Marc and Ste-Catherine) prior to the '76 Olympics to sanitize the city's image for tourists. The bulk of Montreal's queers landed in the Village; estimates are that 40 per cent of the city's gay population now lives there. Even with improvements, the area remains a study in contrasts. While average income is on the rise, unemployment remains high. And Papineau acts as a stark dividing line: the positive changes are noticeable to the west, but walk only one block east and the destitution becomes palpable. The Quebec Gay Chamber of Commerce has set out to improve the Village further. They are now compiling the final data from their 18-month, $35,000 survey of residents and merchants in the Village, to find out exactly what more can be done. "This is part of a long process," says Chamber General Director Guy McDonald. "It will take a lot of consultation." --Matthew Hays 3. Where's the beef: Pointe St-Charles
Average income: $21,231 Quote: "The Pointe was a key industrial district a generation ago. Now more than half the jobs have disappeared, but many of the people have stayed. They've passed their poverty down from generation to generation. It's going round in circles." --city councillor Marcel Sévigny
The best indicator of poverty in the Pointe is the food situation. With five food banks and only two grocery stores, it's difficult for people to eat properly. "They're pretty horrible grocery stores," says Sévigny. "They're dirty, and there's not much there. One owner purchased nearby real estate to rebuild his store. He's had the building permits for over three years now. He just hasn't bothered. I guess he doesn't see the point." Other community activists are angry about the Atwater market, located just across the Pointe's western border. Intended to give local residents a place to buy good food at a bargain, the place is overrun with luxury-food boutiques selling flavoured vinegars at $10 a bottle. "The Atwater market has a community mandate to fulfill, and it's failing miserably," says local housing activist Marie-Josée Corriveau. Paradoxically, despite all its problems, parts of the Pointe remain attractive: wide streets, lots of trees and beautiful walkups built before the war. "I still live here, because I like it here," says Sévigny. "It still has lots of life. Historically speaking." --Philip Preville 2. Baby boom: Victoria
Average income: $14,785 Quote: "One of the things that strikes me is that, over the last five years, 57 per cent of the population has left the district. And there is a constant influx, too: people from all over the world. Forty years ago, this was a Jewish community, but now a microcosm of the UN is in my district." --city councillor Saulie Zajdel
"Some of them settle here, but most of them don't," explained Zajdel. "When they move up social and economic strata, they move out. This is not Westmount, believe me." The population of the Victoria district is notably younger than the rest of the island. Almost 10 per cent of its constituents are under 5 years of age (compared to the average of 5.8 per cent), a fact Zajdel attributes in part to the still prominent Hasidic Jewish population. The neighbourhood's schools are all expanding rapidly and the preponderance of kids in the district prompted the creation of the Centre Sportif Côte-des-Neiges on Van Horne two years ago. "The district waited for this facility for 30 years," said the Centre's director, Richard Pratte, giving credit to Zajdel for his determination to see the facility come to be. The $12-million facility is used by 10 or so nearby schools for athletic programming and after-school activities, and its pool is open to the public. In all, 300 to 400 children use the facility every day. "It helps keep them busy and off the streets," explained one staff member. However, more than 8,000 of Victoria's 29,000 residents are under 18 and the Centre remains the only facility of its kind in the neighbourhood. --Dominique Ritter 1. Mission impossible: Park Extension
Average income: $12,306 Quote: "People in Park Ex are tired of being called the poorest this, the worst that. I've lived in Park Ex for 28 years. There is a lot of community activity here. People get involved. That won't solve the poverty problem, but at least it will give residents a sense of pride." --city councillor Mary Deros
But Park Extension, regardless of how proud its residents may be, seems beyond help. There is no former splendour here. There are no trees, and virtually no space to plant them even if you wanted to. The streets are narrow. There are no charming buildings; most of them were built between 1950 and 1970, hideous boxes with orange or yellow brick façades that look like bathroom tiles. And they're crammed up against one another: over 29,000 people are packed like sardines into a district of only 1.6 square kilometres, more than triple the average population density in Montreal. Recent surveys suggest that 10 per cent of all buildings in Park Ex need major repairs. "And that's definitely an underestimate," claims Gérard Joseph of the Park Extension Action Committee. "Most of the population is made up of recent immigrants who came from places where things were even worse than this. They don't think they have the right to complain, and they don't want to complain." Joseph says landlords know this, and take advantage of it. "So many times, we've had people come to us who live in small basement apartments, wondering why their hydro bill is so expensive. We tell them to go home at night and turn everything off--clocks, refrigerators, everything--and then check their hydro meter to see if it's still running. Usually it is still running, because their landlord is hooked up to their meter. The landlords are hoodwinking tenants into paying their electrical costs. "That's just part of everyday life in Park Extension." --Philip Preville
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It's a bit of a truism to say that neighbourhoods with lots of new immigrants tend to be a city's poorest areas. But east-end Maisonneuve is as pure laine as poverty can get. It's also as sovereignist as poverty can get: PQ cabinet minister Louise Harel has been the region's MNA for 18 years, and BQ leader Gilles Duceppe represents the riding in Ottawa.
It is one of the great ironies in Montreal's urban makeup: unlike Vancouver's West End or Toronto's Church-Wellesley, both of which are decidedly upscale neighbourhoods, Montreal's gay district--particularly its eastern reaches, in the district of Sainte-Marie--is one of the city's poorest.
The first thing you need to know about the Pointe is this: the numbers are deceiving. The Pointe's statistics were rejigged last year to include the six-figure salaries living at Habitat and the Cité du Havre. If you exclude them, best guesses estimate average income at no more than $14,000 and unemployment at around 25 per cent.
For most of its constituents, a home in the Victoria district is a temporary accommodation. Three out of every five people are immigrants--most of whom come from the Philippines, Sri Lanka and Bangledesh--and a majority of them use the neighbourhood as a steppingstone.
There are some poor neighbourhoods--like Maisonneuve or the Pointe, with wide streets, lots of trees and charming (if somewhat rundown) pre-war walkups--that could easily be revived. With an injection of some jobs and some cash, they could return to their former splendour.