Trinity Centre allows overnight guests to use opioids

You’re reading the April 11, 2024 edition of the Peterborough Currents email newsletter. To receive our email newsletters straight to your inbox, sign up here.

Good morning, and welcome to the Peterborough Currents newsletter, where we share our latest stories and catch you up on local news.

In this week’s edition:

• Why overnight guests at the Trinity Centre shelter are allowed to use illegal drugs
• Anti-poverty advocate calls social assistance rates “wildly insufficient”
• Pickleball for Bonnerworth gets final approval

Let’s get to it!

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Why the Trinity Community Centre allows its overnight guests to use drugs

Some overnight guests at One City Peterborough’s Trinity Community Centre inject opioids while they’re there, the organization stated this week in an email outlining how it handles drug use at the shelter.

One City offers a designated space where shelter guests can use drugs, but the organization doesn’t facilitate drug use, according to executive director Christian Harvey. “We are not in any way involved in the substance use,” Harvey said. “We are merely just not kicking people out for using substances.”

Harvey said about five people use drugs in the space each night. “While we do monitor the space it is not a supervised consumption site,” he added.

The strategy is part of a “harm reduction approach” to drug use at the shelter that One City is sharing more information about this week.

“We have designated a discreet area where unsupervised drug use can take place safely,” reads the email sent yesterday by the charitable organization. “This space is not part of the area or services funded by the City of Peterborough, and is only open at night when the Consumption and Treatment Services (CTS) is closed.” 

The CTS is the provincially-funded supervised drug consumption and treatment site on Simcoe Street.

Harvey said that prohibiting substance use in shelters “just drives it underground. And it still happens, it’s just more dangerous.”

Without a designated space for drug use, shelter guests would use drugs in their cots, in the bathrooms, or elsewhere, Harvey said. When that happens, needles are found throughout the shelter and it creates a big “emotional toll” on staff who know that every time they check a washroom, they could find someone who has been poisoned, he said.

Harvey said Peterborough’s unsafe illicit drug supply is forcing homeless shelters to adapt. “We tried out a few different methods,” he said. “But this is the most effective … in keeping both staff and our guests safe.”

In the City of Toronto, the health unit has encouraged all homeless shelters to offer “at least one type of overdose prevention service” at all times, whether that be a sanctioned supervised consumption site or something more informal like a peer witnessing program.

The City of Peterborough funds the daytime drop-in program and overnight shelter that One City operates at the Trinity Centre. But One City offers “a range of other programs that are separate from the City-funded drop-in services,” the city’s communications director Brendan Wedley stated to Currents.

“One City has assured the City that illegal drug use is not permitted in the programs and spaces it provides that are funded by the City of Peterborough,” according to Wedley.

Wedley further stated that the other city-funded shelters in Peterborough — which include the Brock Mission, YES Shelter for Youth and Families, and Cameron House — do not allow drug use. But people who are under the influence of drugs are permitted inside those shelters, according to Wedley. 

Shelter guests at the Brock Mission have described having access to so-called amnesty boxes where they can store their drugs while at the shelter. Guests said they are given a five-hour ban from the shelter whenever they access any items in their amnesty box.

While One City has set aside a space for injection drug use at the Trinity Centre, they can’t do the same for inhalation drug use due to health and safety rules, Harvey said. He called that “a huge weak spot,” because inhalation drug use is increasing locally. “Our system is going to have to find ways to adapt to [inhalation drug use] sooner rather than later,” he said.

Harvey acknowledged that allowing drug use at the Trinity Centre might mean the space isn’t “a good fit” for some people who don’t use drugs or who are in recovery. He said One City works with guests to try to get them into other shelters when that’s the case. But Harvey said relegating drug use to one designated area “allows for people not to see it if they don’t want to.”

Peterborough’s Community Safety and Wellbeing Plan, which was endorsed by the previous city council in 2022, identifies “strengthen[ing] harm reduction initiatives” as one goal for making the community safer, and states that “expand[ing] overdose prevention services” is one strategy to achieve that goal.

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Social assistance rates deemed “wildly insufficient” as cost of living rises

Social assistance rates in Ontario are “wildly insufficient” and the minimum wage isn’t much better, according to Elisha Rubacha, the community impact officer at United Way Peterborough and District.

Rubacha was an author of The Gap, a new report on income inadequacy released by the United Way this week.

As the cost of living increases, people who rely on social assistance or make minimum wage are struggling to put food on the table, Rubacha told reporters at an event to release the report on Tuesday. “When even working people can no longer afford to eat properly, that illustrates a serious problem,” she said.

Currents reporter Brett Throop attended the event and wrote about it for Currents. You can read Brett’s story here.

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Other stories to watch

PICKLEBALL AT BONNERWORTH

Pickleball was on the agenda once again at city council on Monday, and councillors again affirmed their commitment to replacing much of Bonnerworth’s green space with a 16-court pickleball complex and parking lot.

Opinions are mixed about the plan, which pits the wider recreational needs of the city — and its pickleball players — against the interests of local neighbours who say they would prefer the park to remain a green space. In advance of the meeting, The Narwhal published this op-ed about the redevelopment by Bonnerworth neighbour Elaine Anselmi. “Rather than tearing up a park, they could build this pickleball paradise somewhere that’s already paved over, creating new opportunities for activity rather than, at best, breaking even,” Anselmi wrote.

But the Peterborough Examiner came out in favour of pickleball this week, writing that the redevelopment responds to Peterborough’s changing recreational needs and that Hamilton Park, which is immediately north of Bonnerworth, provides plenty of opportunity for open play in a green space.

PARKS AND FACILITIES BYLAW

Peterborough city council voted to approve an amendment to the city’s parks and facilities bylaw that, when implemented, will allow Food Not Bombs to continue serving free meals in Confederation Park, KawarthaNOW reports.

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