After two babies were abandoned in Longueuil last fall, a new committee has been meeting on a regular basis. Its members are trying to find new solutions to a growing problem: pregnant women who are also homeless. At Maison Halo, an emergency shelter exclusively for women, the beds are labelled with a season instead of a number, as well as a painting by a feminist artist. The shelter’s clinical housing supervisor, Blanche Rousseau-Drapeau, said a growing number of women they welcome are pregnant. There have been 10 in the last year-and-a-half. “Maison Halo, women who are alone in their motherhood and do not have their partners with them are more at risk of not having enough money to have proper housing, to have access to food, to have access to just their basic needs,” she told CTV News. It’s a growing concern as two newborn babies were found abandoned in Longueuil in separate incidents last fall. Soon after, community organizations and the city formed a committee to look into how they could better help women in vulnerable situations. “If these women had the support and had the community and knew about the different places like the Halo, or even or partner shelters, I would assume that perhaps things could have gone differently,” Rousseau-Drapeau said. She said women generally experience homelessness much differently than men do. “Most women are under a situation of hidden homelessness, where they go from couch to couch, live in their car and just stay hidden because a woman that’s visible in the street is a woman that’s going to be a target,” she added. Maison Halo recently added a nurse to its team who comes to the shelter monthly. Rousseau-Drapeau said they’d also like to train health-care workers and police in how to approach and help homeless women who may have trust issues. “It’s about having a good system around you to make sure that it is a success and that you don’t go through that alone, because that’s the issue. These women go through it alone,” Rousseau-Drapeau said. The committee members will continue to meet in the coming months as they work to better serve the women in their community.
