Montreal homeless centre failed to open despite deep freeze

Advocates say a Montreal mission'sfailure to open its doors to the homelessduring a cold snap earlier this weekreflects a lack of of co-ordination between the city and partners.

The city has two warming centres, which aresupposed to offer temporary shelterwhen the windchill drops below -27at night.

Overnight Monday, it dropped to -28 with the wind chill atTrudeauairport.

But the city saysone of those centres, the St. Michael's Mission, failed to open its doorsbecause they had "misinterpreted the forecast."

St. Michael's haspromised it won't happen again.

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Alexandre Paradis, an outreach worker withSOSItinrance,said the city needs to do more to ensure homeless people have a safe place to go when the temperature drops.

Paradis said it's hard for people on the streets to know which locations are open and when.

He has launched an online petition calling for centres toopen their doorsonce the wind chill hits-15.