Montreal police wasted no time enforcing the newest bylaw in the city's downtown borough of Ville-Marie.

Just after 12:01 a.m. Friday, they started forcing street kids and homeless people out of the borough's 15 public squares.

The new bylaw makes it an offence to hang out or sleep in the squares between midnight and 6 a.m. It's already illegal to sleep in parks.

People who work with the homeless are worried about what's going to happen to them.

Where they will go is "certainly the kind of question we thought the city would be able to answer before they would impose this kind of rule," James Hughes, director general of the Old Brewery Mission, said Friday.

"We would like to think a city as smart, as grown up as this one, would take a much more humane approach to dealing with this very difficult issue."

30,000 homeless

Hughes estimates there are 30,000 homeless people in Montreal and a high percentage of them in Ville-Marie.

In one square alone, at Berri and Ste-Catherine streets, police forced about 50 people out and issued a handful of tickets, which can cost the recipients up to $141 each.

In this case, they said the fine would be $141 and the charge on the tickets was "being in a park after hours."

A street girl known as Spades said she has been sleeping in the downtown square for the last three weeks. She said she was surprised by the sudden show of force.

"Once, they bothered us before. But not like this, not with like six, seven cruisers."

Ville-Marie borough Mayor Benoît Labonté has said the ban is necessary in part because sleeping wasn't the only thing happening in the public spaces.

Nowhere to turn

"There were a lot of problems with … prostitution and drug selling in some parks," he said.

But Spades said she now has nowhere to turn.

"Where are you going to go when you're homeless and the cops kick you out from everywhere?"

Spades said the square was one of the safest places for her to sleep.

Now, she said, she'll have to fight others in the same situation for a spot in a store entrance, on the sidewalk or under one of Montreal's bridges.

This is what has Hughes concerned.

A bed for anyone who wants it

He said there is room in city shelters, but many homeless people don't want to go there.

"We are going to wait and see where they go. We can't increase our capacity, nor do we want to. We think we are big enough," Hughes said.

"We prefer to take a more clinical or case-management view to the problem of homelessness rather than a punitive one.

"We would have liked to see, as I say, a lot more planning and consulting and thinking and reflecting done on how to address the very complex issue of the needs of street people, such as the ones who use these squares."

Hughes said there are more than 500 beds available in the city's three major shelters.

"We say there is a bed in Montreal for anyone who wants it. And some people don't want it. Often for very good reasons, and including the people who are the focus of this new regulation."