Number of unhoused people in Quebec rose by 20% between 2022 and 2025
The number of visibly unhoused people in Quebec rose by more than 20 per cent between 2022 and 2025, to 12,077, according to a count by the provincial government.
The homeless census, conducted on the night of April 15, 2025, found that homelessness is growing faster outside the province’s major cities, with more rural regions experiencing the most growth in their unhoused population, though Montreal continues to have the largest number of people experiencing homelessness.
Across the province, 9,518 people were staying in shelters and other temporary resources the night the count was conducted, while another 246 were in hospital and 426 were being held in police station jails or detention centres.
The count, released Thursday, found that 411 people were staying in encampments, while another 1,476 spent the night outside, but not in an encampment.
Montreal had the largest unhoused population of the 15 Quebec regions where the count was conducted, more than 5,000 people.
The city also had the most people staying outside, more than 800, around 44 per cent of all of those sleeping outside in Quebec.
The percentage of the population experiencing homelessness was also higher in Montreal than in the other Quebec regions, with 229.5 unhoused people per 100,000 residents. That’s compared to a provincial average of 133.2 unhoused people per 100,000 residents.
Abitibi-Témiscamingue and the Outaouais were the only other regions with more than 200 homeless people per 100,000 residents.
Laval had the lowest rate of homelessness, with 64.7 unhoused people per 100,000 residents.
Between 2022 and 2025, homelessness grew fastest in the Abitibi-Témiscamingue region, rising by 119.1 per cent, an increase of a 162 people. The Laurentians had the largest increase in the number of unhoused people, 331, a 73.7 per cent increase.
The Côte-Nord, Laval and Saguenay—Lac-Saint-Jean regions also had increases of over 50 per cent in their unhoused populations.
In Montreal, there were 295 more people experiencing homelessness in 2025 than in 2022, an increase of 6.7 per cent.
The count found that the number of people spending the night outside rose faster between 2022 and 2025, increasing by around 14 per cent a year, than it did between 2018 and 2022, when it rose by around 10 per cent a year.
It observed the opposite trend when it came to the number people staying in shelters, which increased by eight per cent a year between 2018 and 2022 and by six per cent a year between 2022 and 2025.
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