Hochelaga borough asks Transport Ministry to take charge of piece of land — or give it up

The borough of Mercier-Hochelaga-Maisonneuve says a piece of land owned by the province is costing too much to maintain.

The land alongside Notre-Dame Street East in Hochelaga has become a homeless encampment over the last few years. Now, the borough is asking the province to pay up, or fork over the land.

The piece of land is a green space that sits along Notre-Dame Street East and is owned by Quebec's Transport Ministry. During and since the pandemic, the long patches of grass have mostly been used by encampments set up by people who are unhoused.

But the dispute between the borough and the ministry dates back nearly 40 years, when Jean Drapeau was still mayor of Montreal.

On June 10, 1985, Drapeau struck a deal with the province, which at the time imagined building an urban boulevard along the St. Lawrence River waterfront east of downtown.

Drapeau said the city would cover the cost to maintain the land until the boulevard was finished.

The boulevard was never built and city workers have, since then, mowed the grass and picked up trash on the property.

In a letter to Quebec Transport Minister Geneviève Guilbault earlier this month, Mercier-Hochelaga-Maisonneuve borough mayor Pierre-Lessard Blais said the city and borough tolerated the agreement because the land was easy to maintain. 

Blais says things have changed. 

"The resources needed to maintain your land exceed the capabilities of our district. The presence of people experiencing homelessness, significant traffic on a bike path, the adjacent presence of an abandoned building belonging to you, snow removal, infrastructure maintenance as well as the collection of significant quantities of waste imposes a disproportionate workload on our employees," the borough mayor wrote in the letter dated Oct. 7.

The borough says maintaining the land now takes up to 80 hours a week of work by borough workers, adding up to 3,500 hours a year and costing several hundred thousand dollars a year.

Blais wants the province to either hand over the land at no cost, offer regular compensation for maintenance or to assume full responsibility for taking care of the land.

Both he and and Guilbault, the provincial transport minister, were unavailable to comment when CBC News reached out to their offices.

The letter says negotiations have been going on for weeks between the borough and the ministry, and that the borough mayor reached out directly to the minister hoping to accelerate the discussions.