Some asylum-seekers struggling to find housing after leaving shelters
MONTREAL — Some of the asylum-seekers who have recently crossed the Canada-U.S. border say they’re struggling to find a place to live once they leave government-run temporary shelters.
Ahmed Iftikhar, 42, says he walked across the border from New York in late July with his wife and four children.
Since then, he says they’ve been moved from one temporary shelter to another: first a hotel, then the Olympic Stadium, and now a former convent in the city’s Ahuntsic-Cartierville borough.
The shelters have been set up to receive the surging number of asylum seekers who have been crossing into Quebec in recent weeks, but they are only intended as temporary housing.