Overdose prevention site has found a home

A team of local agencies has finally found a home for the city’s first temporary overdose prevention site — so long as the effort isn’t derailed by the looming provincial election.

In the midst of an opioid crisis, the Shelter Health Network has spent weeks trying to find a temporary site where people can safely inject drugs under the supervision of health professionals. (The effort is separate from the more bureaucratic process of setting up a permanent supervised injection site, which some councillors are lobbying to locate in a local hospital.) Until now, the search has been variously foiled by landlord reluctance and municipal zoning regulations.

That changed last week when the network reached an agreement with Hamilton Urban Core Community Health Centre to use space at 71 Rebecca St., confirmed network lead physician Dr. Jill Wiwcharuk on Friday. Provincial approval and funding is still required. Ward 2 Coun. Jason Farr lauded the “determination and hard work” of the group — which includes a partnership of the city, Good Shepherd Centres, Wesley Urban Ministries, the AIDS Network, Aboriginal Health Centre, CMHA and Marchese Pharmacy.

“It’s right in the heart of the area we were looking at as a priority,” he said, pointing to the public health study on the need for a supervised injection site.

Now, network members are anxiously awaiting provincial approval — ideally before the election writ drops Wednesday, which could delay a funding decision. Politically, new Progressive Conservative party Leader Doug Ford has also said he is “dead against” the idea of supervised injection sites.

A temporary overdose prevention site is supposed to be easier to start up because the federal government has delegated approval authority to provincial health ministries, which also provide funding. An approved site would have permission to operate for up to six months, with the potential for renewal. The first such temporary site opened in London in February. New sites have since opened in Ottawa and Toronto as Hamilton struggles to find a willing host. The slowerthan-expected progress has been a growing source of frustration for local agencies given the spike in opioid-related deaths in Hamilton and across Ontario.

Last year, there were 1,053 opioid-related deaths in Ontario from January to October, which was a 52 per cent spike over the same period the year before. In Hamilton, the increase in deaths over that same time surged more than 80 per cent, with 75 fatalities. The proposed site (the city’s former bus station) is right across from the city-owned parking lot the network had originally eyed as a site to put up a trailer. That plan became bogged down in municipal zoning requirements. The health centre site is also proposed to become an eventual 30-storey condo and retail development by Sonoma Development Group. But Farr said the “temporary” nature of the overdose prevention site will not impact that development plan, which is still in the application stage.