No end in sight for Niagara’s state of emergency

More than a year after declaring a state of emergency on homelessness, mental health and opioid addiction, it will be up to Niagara Region councillors to decide when to end it.

That’s because when their decision to declare an emergency was made in February 2023, councillors did not establish any threshold regarding when the situation will have improved enough to declare it over.

“It’s been a year and I think we’re in a better position to put metrics in place to identify why we chose to declare a state of emergency, and better identify how we can work our way out of a state of emergency,” St. Catharines Coun. Haley Bateman said during Tuesday’s public health and social services committee meeting.

“I’m wondering what those next steps will be and how we would then define them. Or is that something we would ask staff for?” she said.

Said Welland Coun. Pat Chiocchio, the committee co-chair, “I think it’s up to us to decide how we move forward with this.”

Community services commissioner Adrienne Jugley said staff cannot provide any recommendations to council on the issue.

She said councillors declared the emergency and it would be up to them to determine thresholds and changes that would need to be in place “where you feel comfortable that we’re not in that same state.”

Jugley said the Region does set targets through the national Built for Zero program to end chronic homelessness “and we would say we’re on the right path when we start to see our numbers trend downwards.”

Bateman said defining a threshold might help Niagara get supports where they’re needed.

A report presented to the committee Tuesday showed Niagara paramedics responded to 734 suspected drug overdoses last year, compared to 663 in 2022. However, it’s significantly less than 1,005 reported in 2021.

Although the number of mentalhealth cases remains stable, the report said there has been a significant increase in the number of clients suffering from more complex mental illness requiring more intensive services.

The number of people experiencing homelessness has also increased significantly.

Last December, 1,231 people were experiencing homelessness, compared to 1,099 a year earlier; while people experiencing chronic homelessness increased by eight per cent in that time, with 594 people in that category as of December.