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The Quebec Superior Court has prevented the City of Montreal from dismantling a homeless encampment under an overpass, saying officials failed to provide a suitable alternative for the unhoused residents.
The ruling forces the city to respect a bylaw it adopted earlier this year on homelessness, which says moving an encampment is a last resort and requires officials to identify zones where tents will be tolerated. The decision by Justice Alexandre Pless also affirms the constitutional rights to safety, security and dignity of people experiencing homelessness.
“This does not imply a free-standing right to appropriate any property they choose for as long as they choose. But a human being cannot exist nowhere,” Pless wrote in his ruling dated Monday.
He said the city failed to offer viable alternatives to the 10 people who have been living under the Van Horne overpass, near a skate park, since the fall of 2025. The judge issued an indefinite injunction allowing them to stay until the case is heard on its merits.
However, he said if officials find another location for the residents, “one that is sustainable, safe, and respects the residents’ dignity, it remains open to the city to again ask the residents to move.”
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In May, the city sent the Van Horne encampment residents a notice asking them to relocate to ensure public access to the nearby skate park and basketball court. The Mobile Legal Clinic, which promotes access to justice for those experiencing homelessness, took up the case and filed an injunction against the eviction.
The legal clinic has also obtained safeguards protecting a large encampment in the city’s east end.
Université de Montréal law professor Karine Millaire says she expects Pless’s injunction to weigh heavily when the case is heard on its merits, which could lead to a permanent order preventing an eviction.
She pointed to a recent decision from the Ontario Superior Court overturning a bylaw in Waterloo, Ont., that would have allowed the city to clear an encampment on a site it wanted to turn into a transit hub. Justice Michael R. Gibson wrote that evicting vulnerable people from encampments without providing alternatives infringes on their right to life.
Millaire says decisions like those issued by Pless and Gibson “should be a wake-up call.”
“It is becoming a humanitarian crisis in Canada’s major cities,” she said, with courts having to “pit individual or state ownership against people’s right to live.”
According to court documents, the City of Montreal had provided the Van Horne encampment residents with two options. One was another stretch of land under the Van Horne overpass further away from the public parks. However, the residents said that stretch was lower to the ground, making it impossible to sleep because of constant traffic noise.
The second location offered by the city was deemed unsuitable by the clinic because the site will be turned into a skating rink in the winter.
On behalf of the 10 residents, the clinic argued that dismantling their encampment would violate their rights to safety and dignity, among others, and that forcing them to move would cause them serious or irreparable harm.
Pless agreed, citing a report from an expert presented in court that said evicting unhoused people from encampments creates increased stress, reduced mobility, greater social isolation, loss of community support and increased risks to health and personal security.
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