Two new outreach workers have been hired to work in the city’s downtown core in an effort aimed at helping business owners, the vulnerable population and diverting calls from police.
“In the past, if somebody was in crisis, as a business we didn’t really have anybody to call,” Downtown Sudbury Business Improvement Area co-chair Jeff MacIntyre told Sudbury.com.
In cases involving mental health crises, loitering or drug use, it often isn’t necessary to involve police, but police are often called regardless.
“Generally, a business would call police, and police would prioritize that generally fairly low because the person isn’t doing much to break the law other than being somewhere they’re not wanted,” MacIntyre explained.
The new program, called Welcoming Streets Sudbury and branded by Downtown Sudbury as part of “Propel Sudbury,” involves a partnership with the Go-Give Project, through which two outreach workers have been hired to work with downtown business owners.
Their goal will be to de-escalate situations downtown, link members of the vulnerable community with services and prevent unnecessary calls to police.
Staff at downtown businesses have been provided with a direct line to the outreach workers.
In the event outreach workers end up having to call police, MacIntyre said they’re more likely to get timely response because a significant attempt by professionals has already been made to deal with the situation.
“This is definitely a better Band-Aid,” MacIntyre said. “It helps businesses get through this period where Sudbury is experiencing high levels of opioid usage and homelessness, and allows them to better interact with the population going through this crisis.”
The two new outreach workers are currently going through training, Go-Give Project executive director Evie Ali told Sudbury.com, and are expected to hit the streets by early February.
“We’re making sure they’re well-equipped to be out in the community,” she said, noting the team will work alongside existing outreach workers to bring their service closer to 24-hours per day.
A team of four mobile outreach workers currently work from 8 p.m. to 1 a.m., and their office hours from 9 a.m. to 4 p.m. include two outreach workers.
The upcoming pair of outreach workers will bridge the afternoon gap, from 4 p.m. to 8 p.m., and work additional hours so they’re closer to full-time.
Whether it’s mental health concerns, loitering or another such concern business owners bring to their attention, Ali said the outreach workers will “mitigate this traffic in a safe and compassionate way that will alleviate the stress against the business and the individual involved.”
As MacIntyre also indicated, Ali noted that many of the existing calls from downtown business owners to police do not necessarily require police presence.
Trained outreach workers familiar with vulnerable members of the community being their first point of contact, rather than police, using trauma-informed approaches, is a more effective solution, she said.
In addition to Welcoming Streets Sudbury, the Propel Downtown umbrella program also includes the existing Downtown Clean-Up Program, which is a “zero-barrier” program for vulnerable residents offering a $10 per hour honourarium to clean up the downtown.
The Downtown Clean-Up Program is routinely at capacity, MacIntyre said, with four to five people per day taking part.
Downtown Sudbury has branded the two programs together as Propel Downtown because they were always meant to work together, MacIntyre said, with outreach workers referring cleanup participants to other programs and services.
“We didn’t have the funding to do all of it so we did what we could,” he said. “This brings the whole program together.”
The Greater Sudbury Development Corporation contributed $122,840 toward the two programs this year, which MacIntyre said was a one-time deal for a 2024 pilot project he anticipates will prove its merit and become permanent in some capacity.
“In other communities this has been tried, the success was so high that it became permanent,” he said. “We’re following the path of other communities like Guelph, which have gone down this road and seen good outcomes and a visible and substantial improvement to the downtown experience and better outcomes for people in crisis.”
Tyler Clarke covers city hall and political affairs for Sudbury.com.
