Homelessness in Montreal

Eric Latimer, Ph.D., is a health economist with a particular interest in services for people with mental illness, including homeless people.  He is currently Professor in the Department of Psychiatry at McGill University, and Research Scientist at the Douglas Mental Health University Institute.  In recent years, he has headed research for the Montreal site of the At Home/Chez Soi study of Housing First for homeless people with mental illness, and led the economic analysis for the Canadian project as a whole. 

James McGregor is an urban planner and a housing practitioner who recently served as Vice President at the Société d’habitation du Québec, where he was in charge of policy and program development. Previously he worked for the City of Montréal delivering affordable housing. He has worked as a consultant in various countries and in the 1970’s founded a housing resource group that is still an active and successful organisation today.

He is presently directing a new initiative, the Mouvement pour metre fin à l’itinérance à Montréal (MMFIM). Created just a year ago, the Mouvement brings together a broad coalition of business, university, and non-profit leaders to answer the question: Is it not time to seek to end homelessness, rather than providing services to the homeless? The Mouvement is inspired in this by various initiatives in New York, Toronto and Calgary, and informed by the well documented research of the At Home/Chez Soi study of Housing First for homeless people with mental illness.