Funding for the supervised consumption site, transitional housing complex, affordable housing and various other services for Sudbury’s most vulnerable appear to be top local priorities.
These topics dominated the discussion during Tuesday’s pre-budget consultation meeting by the province’s Standing Committee on Finance and Economic Affairs at the Radisson Hotel in Sudbury on Tuesday.
Top of mind for many is The Spot, the city’s only sanctioned supervised consumption site, which is slated to close at the end of February due to a lack of funding.
The Spot manager Amber Fritz (of Réseau ACCESS Network) delivered a presentation in which she requested the province step in to begin funding the site, noting they’ve had an application in since 2021.
Since it opened in September 2022, Fritz reports that 24 overdoses were reversed at The Spot, which were all dealt with on-site without the need for emergency responders or hospital stays.
From January to August 2023, an estimated 54 Sudbury and Manitoulin district residents died from an opioid-related overdose, she said — “People, not numbers, people.”
“It doesn’t have to be that way,” she added. “We know what to do to prevent these deaths.”
In addition to saving lives, she said supervised consumption sites and other harm-reduction efforts help reduce costs. One course of hepatitis C treatment costs $50,000 to $70,000, and one year of HIV medication costs $15,000, she said, noting that needles are much less expensive.
So far this month, there were 376 consumptions and 302 visits to The Spot, which she said would be a much greater number if they were located in a more ideal location central to downtown and if their hours weren’t hampered by staff turnover due to the impending closure.
She estimates they’d help 60 people daily if these changes were made.
If the province doesn’t pledge approximately $1.3 million in annual funding toward The Spot, Nickel Belt NDP MPP France Gélinas told the committee that people will die.
In an emotional plea, Gélinas shared that her own nephew died of a drug overdose.
“He was a good kid who could not gain access to the programs and services to help him, and he’s not with us any more, and that happens to many, many families,” she said.
During his remarks, Mayor Paul Lefebvre also advocated for provincial funding for The Spot, plus $2.5 million in annual funding toward the transitional housing complex currently under construction on Lorraine Street.
Transitional housing is a winning formula, he said, which will be staffed by an Assertive Community Treatment Team (ACTT) of medical experts to help residents find success.
In October, city Children and Social Services Director Tyler Campbell told city council that between the city’s preliminary ACTT (which has been operating at a temporary location) and other local efforts which follow a Housing First model, 308 people who’d been experiencing homelessness have been housed since July 2021. Of them, approximately 10 per cent return to homelessness.
During his remarks, Lefebvre also requested the province remove the $10-million cap on municipal funding from the Ontario Community Infrastructure Fund.
If not for the cap, the city would be raking in more than $18 million from the annual fund, which Lefebvre said the city needs to help address their infrastructure spending gap.
“Because we’re amalgamated, we’re punished,” Lefebvre said, noting that prior to amalgamation, each municipality that now forms the City of Greater Sudbury could have applied for the funding up to its $10-million cap.
The province imposed amalgamation upon these municipalities in 2001 under the premise of saving money, and Lefebvre said that financially penalizing the municipality runs counter to this.
The cap affects the City of Greater Sudbury, Municipality of Chatham-Kent and the City of Thunder Bay. All three have been advocating for the funding cap to be lifted since it was introduced in 2022.
Lefebvre also pushed for the province to subsidize affordable housing, noting the city is willing to step up the plate by providing land.
“If somebody wants to build affordable housing with affordable rents, they have to be subsidized,” he said. “Nobody’s in the business of losing money.”
A recent report to city council noted that Greater Sudbury has a deficit of affordable housing stock. Developers have been focusing on market units, which drives up demand/cost for more affordable older housing stock.
Lefebvre said the city needs more geared-rented-to-income and affordable housing units, which both have long waiting lists (last year’s report cited waiting lists of 655 for geared-rented-to-income units and of at least 301 for low-end of market rental units).
Tuesday morning’s slate of presenters also included Ontario Public Service Employees Union president JP Hornick, who criticized the government on numerous fronts, including their role in the “affordability crisis,” health-care privatization and relocating ServiceOntario locations into Walmarts and Staples buildings.
Representatives from Sudbury Better Beginnings Better Futures and the Capreol Nurse Practitioner-Led Clinic were also present to request funding.
During their time to ask questions of Tuesday’s presenters, Progressive Conservative MPPs spent much of their time talking up what their government has done.
Carleton Progressive Conservative MPP Goldie Ghamari asked Hornick a question about the Israel/Palestine conflict in response to members’ attendance at a Palestinian solidarity rally in Toronto. (As part of Hornick’s reply, they said, “Greater minds than I have been trying to solve the problem in the Middle East for a lot longer than I have been alive”).
Ghamari then spent a large portion of the meeting looking at her phone.
“It is like they’re from another planet,” West told Sudbury.com of Progressive Conservative MPPs after the meeting, adding that they stick to talking points and run out the clock “because they don’t want to face the reality of what’s happening.”
Pulling aside the province’s current means of addressing housing, which he describes as targeting market value housing, West said those who most need help through transitional and affordable housing, are largely left out of the equation.
The government “wants people to believe in this trickle-down economics theory that if you build enough mansions, eventually the mansions will only be $100,000 and we’ll all have one,” West said.
“That’s not the reality for people here, especially when you’re walking around in the cold today, seeing people shivering and living in tents.”
Tuesday’s pre-budget consultations were part of a series of meetings held throughout the province. An online survey is also available, which can be found by clicking here.
Tyler Clarke covers city hall and political affairs for Sudbury.com.
