After originally declining to be interviewed, representatives of the City of Greater Sudbury and the Sudbury Action Centre for Youth (SACY) finally agreed to sit down with Sudbury.com regarding concerns raised in a recent article about the downtown warming centre.
For some time, several of our sources in the outreach community shared their concerns with Sudbury.com that the facility, which is located in a lower level of Tom Davies Square and provides a place for the city’s homeless population to get out of the cold, had serious problems, including staffing issues, lack of access to Narcan (a life-saving overdose medication), and the lack of safety and cleanliness that could lead to a COVID-19 outbreak, violence, or worse.
Hosted and funded by the City of Greater Sudbury and operated by SACY, Sudbury.com visited the centre unannounced one night in January to see for ourselves what it was like. What we saw there seemed to confirm what we had been told.
After publishing this first-person account, we reached out to the city, Ward 10 Coun. Fern Cormier and SACY looking for a response to what we had been told and what we saw. However, all refused to speak because, in their view, the story was an “opinion piece” and therefore not something to which they would respond.
Finally, this week after repeated attempts to secure an interview, Julie Gorman, the executive director of SACY, and Gail Spencer, the co-ordinator of shelters and homelessness with the City of Greater Sudbury, agreed to sit down with us. The two were interviewed together on the issues raised in our coverage.
Narcan supply
Our sources doing outreach with the homeless told us centre staff appear to have issues accessing Narcan (also referred to as Naloxone), sharing in particular an incident in which warming centre staff had to ask outreach workers for extra supply of the medication because they couldn’t find any.
Clearly, a medication used to treat deadly opioid overdoses should be readily available and easy to access.
Gorman seemed to downplay the issue, saying being without Narcan would be unlikely, but not directly addressing the specific concern that staff have trouble locating Narcan kits should they need them.
“We work with a lot of community partners to ensure that these types of things do not continue or do not happen,” she said. “Not only do we have Naloxone on site for staff to use and to get out to clients, but the majority of the staff as well as some of the contracted staff do carry it on their person as well. And many clients have at least one if not multiple kits on them, too.”
Gorman said the warming centre “usually” has a couple of cases of Narcan on hand. But again, she did not address the concerns of outreach workers who have been contacted by warming centre staff looking for the drug.
In fact, she noted an incident on Christmas Eve when a SACY manager had to travel to the warming centre with a case of Narcan. There was Narcan at the centre, Gorman said, but the staff did not know where to find it.
Staff shortages
In regards to staffing issues, Gorman and Spencer both confirmed it has been an issue primarily due to the pandemic.
In a press release issued by SACY following earlier coverage, Gorman stated the centre has been “experiencing ongoing staffing issues, particularly during night and weekend shifts.” She said three staff members have had to request at least one 10-day stretch off of work to support a child at home isolating.
As well, “we have had five staff who were together outside of work when they became a close contact to a known case and had to isolate, all at once,” said Gorman. “We have experienced staffing shortages especially during the shifts on weekends and overnight, shifts notoriously difficult to fill.”
In other coverage, Sudbury.com asked city officials about absenteeism due to the pandemic, particularly in relation to the Omicron variant, and we were told by both Spencer on Jan. 7 and by the city’s director of children and social services, Tyler Campbell on Jan. 14 that in case of staffing shortages, there would be co-ordination with other providers for “overtime” or creating an “on-call list” said Campbell.
It is unclear whether that co-ordination has occurred because neither Gorman nor Spencer addressed the issue during the interview, although they were asked what was being done to prevent shortages in the future.
Temporary solution
The centre is being funded using provincial dollars as a temporary solution during the winter months.
Spencer said that there are no plans to continue the warming shelter past May, as there is the hope that there will be lifting of pandemic restrictions and the ability to rely more heavily on community partners who have been hampered by capacity restrictions thus far.
Both Spencer and Gorman placed a great deal of blame for the issues at the warming centre on the pandemic, for the staffing challenges but also for what appears to be the haphazard operation of the facility.
The City of Greater Sudbury did not operate a warming shelter previous to the pandemic, said Spencer, and it only became the host when, in December 2020, the landlord of the 19 Frood road location of the Centre de santé communautaire du Grand Sudbury expressed concern about hosting it, leaving the city to scramble not only to find an operator but also a location.
The warming centre is funded with assistance from the provincial Social Services Relief Fund. The original agreement was $35,850 per month for daytime hours (11 a.m. to 7 p.m.) from July 1 to Aug. 31, 2021, to run it as a cooling centre. On Sept. 10, 2021, the hours expanded from 7 a.m. to 11 p.m., with a funding boost to $41,101 a month starting in September.
The city said the centre went from daytime to overnight on Oct. 4, 2021. SACY was provided with $52,045 in funding for that month and approximately $82,143 per month from last November through to May 31, 2022, when the agreement ends.
However, Spencer specified in the interview that the funding lasts until March, and then another provincial fund will be used for the remainder of the contract.
The monthly operating budget of $82,143 is expensive and Sudbury.com was curious how that money is spent, so we asked for an itemized budget detailing the warming centre’s costs. We never received the budget, despite asking several times. We were provided with some information, though, which is detailed below.
Of the $82,143 monthly budget, wages and benefits line account for $76,700 per month. This monthly total covers the following positions and hours: four frontline staff positions to cover 24 hours of service, plus three full-time employees: a program co-ordinator, a volunteer co-ordinator and administrative support.
Wages are between $20 and $23 per hour, a salary amount Gorman said is “more competitive pay than SACY is used to being able to provide.”
In terms of the number of people, and this is still a bit unclear, the centre uses a mix of paid and volunteer staff. The frontline staff pool is approximately 30 people. We asked for the shift durations to better understand staffing. And, since the centre uses public money, Sudbury.com asked for the names and salaries of managers and the number of volunteers.
Gorman held back some information, but said SACY had to go on a hiring spree to staff the centre.
“I cannot give names and wages directly to media for staff in order to protect their personal privacy,” said Gorman. “I can note that all positions began new to SACY as a means of supporting the oversight of this program. For the full-time positions, we hired two internal applicants and one new staff.”
Shift schedules vary, she said, but most people are working eight-hour shifts with four staff on at all times.
The remainder of the funding, approximately $5,400, is allocated to “external contracted services like the four to eight monthly deliveries of water and bulk and heavy grocery supplies, and a portion of the cost for financial oversight from an external bookkeeper” said Gorman. “These services total an average of $1100/month.”
“We also purchase coffee, sugar, whitener, snack foods, oats, condiments, cups, napkins, disposable cutlery, and containers for an average total cost of $3100/month.”
Sudbury.com also asked for itemized spending data from December and January, as well as specifics as to what constitutes the “bulk and heavy groceries” as no meals are served at the warming centre. We received no answers.
For that cost, the warming centre is available for those who need it day and night. While the capacity limit for the space in TDS is a maximum of 32 people, our sources tell Sudbury.com the average capacity usually exceeds that, as it did on the night Sudbury.com visited when we counted more than 40 people. However, given the frigid daytime and nighttime temperatures in recent weeks, it seems reasonable to exceed the capacity limit on humanitarian grounds.
No changes
Despite the issues raised by outreach workers and Sudbury.com’s coverage, Spencer told us there are no plans for changes or amendments to the shelter operations, other than a focus on hiring staff.
“At this point, there's no plan changes,” she said. “Ideally, the size is meeting the need. And we still have available shelter beds, at the Off The Street shelter and Elizabeth Fry (the new shelter for women that opened its nine beds on Jan. 24.) Over the weekend (Jan. 29 and 30) we had, I think nine available shelter beds at the Off The Street shelter, (and) we have available shelter beds at the new Elizabeth Fry warming center, and as well as Cedar Place.”
Spencer said they are encouraging people who need it to use the shelter.
“So at this point, there's no plans to change the space at all, in terms of capacity, but again, just trying to work closely with the people that are needing to use the space to help them to find their own home housing, use the other services that are available, and go go back to their own home. That's if they do have one to use.”
Jenny Lamothe is a reporter with Sudbury.com. She covers the diverse communities of Sudbury, especially the vulnerable or marginalized, including the Black, Indigenous, newcomer and Francophone communities, as well as 2SLGBTQ+ and issues of the downtown core.
