A cry for help for the homeless

A coalition of dozens of community groups that work with Montreal's homeless planned to hold a demonstratin tuesday afternoon outside the Montreal Health Agency on St-Denis to drive home the point that the groups' operating budgets are not keeping pace with the growing demand for their services.

Coalition coordinator  Pierre Gaudreau says the 63 groups that receive their funding from the health agency get a total annual budget of about 15-million dollars. He says that's about six-million short of what they need. Gaudreau says the 6-million dollar shortfall sounds like alot, but is only a small part of the health system's five-billion dollar budget.