When Sandy Hill Community Health Centre closed its supervised injection site in February, Louise Lapointe wondered what would happen.
“I think a lot of people expected things to go through some sort of pandemonium level,” said Lapointe, the former chair of community association Action Sandy Hill.
She wasn’t so sure. She wondered whether there might be a reprieve from the chaos she regularly saw near the centre on Nelson Street.
In her view, there was. But it didn’t last long. The open drug use, dealing and social disorder ticked back up as the warm weather returned — or was simply dispersed to other nearby spots in the neighbourhood.
She saw it spill onto private property and watched what she called a “makeshift injection site” take shape on a sidewalk in front of Centre 454 on King Edward Avenue.
Keith Nuthall, who lives right around the corner from that sidewalk, noted that the Sandy Hill site is just one of many social services in the area, and its clients have simply moved to others — including the one near his home.
“We have seen a dispersal of people who are suffering addiction problems from the injection site, which has security, to Centre 454, which doesn’t,” said Nuthall, who’s also chair of the Downtown Ottawa Condominium Alliance.
He said Centre 454 has struggled to deal with the fallout, leaving residents of his condo to deal with the open drug use on the sidewalk, and sometimes the violence that comes with it.
Police hear of ‘dramatic increase’ in problems
Sgt. Paul Stam, who works on the Ottawa Police Service’s community outreach and engagement strategy in the downtown core, has noticed similar trends since harmful drug fumes forced the supervised consumption site to close.
He’s eager to see it reopen. With a new ventilation system now in place, that’s expected to happen Monday.
“Anecdotally, with that centre being closed, we’re hearing from the community that there has been an increased amount of issues that they’re seeing,” he said.
“They’re noticing … quite a dramatic increase in problematic behaviours in that area, and they’re certainly asking for more of a police presence, which we are absolutely dedicated to providing.”
Stam said those problematic behaviours include fighting, open drug use and open sex trafficking.
He called the situation complicated, with so many variables that it’s impossible to know whether the closure has anything to do with the current trends. But there does appear to be a spillover that’s affecting residents.
“Those people who have normally been using that service are now using in the community,” Stam said. “So that’s often on private property, in their backyards and on porches and alleyways.”
Ottawa Public Health has provided regular updates to Action Sandy Hill about the suspension of supervised consumption services. They reported that overdose visits to emergency rooms were consistently within normal limits.
But the updates did point to increased substance use in public areas, as well as more vandalism, littering, unsafe disposal of needles and a “steep increase in reports of human feces in outdoor spaces, such as sidewalks, driveways and front lawns.”
Closure has ‘tremendous impact’ on drug users
Derrick St John, acting director of consumption and treatment services at the Sandy Hill Community Health Centre, has also heard complaints about defecation and urination on private property, a phenomenon he linked to the closure of the OASIS program’s public washrooms.
St John said the impact of the closure on clients has been severe, disrupting their daily patterns and upending their lives.
The loss of one of the city’s three supervised injection sites has also exposed them to violence, he said, since it might make it harder to avoid dangerous people to whom they owe debts.
“We’ve seen a lot of people walking around with black eyes and kind of beat up,” he said. “So it’s had a tremendous impact on their personal lives.”
St John said more drug users have opted to inhale drugs instead of using them inside, putting them at greater risk of harm.
“We know that a lot of the overdose deaths that happen in Ottawa and in Ontario are related to smoking,” he said.
The Ottawa Paramedic Service said it responded to a roughly similar number of opioid overdoses on Rideau Street during the period from March 1 to July 1, compared to the four months previous. King Edward Avenue saw a slight decrease.
Calla Barnett, the interim chair of Action Sandy Hill, has noticed the same dispersal that Stam, Nuthall and Lapointe pointed to.
“Residents who live in the area are saying that it’s worse than ever,” she said. “We’re not sure that it’s entirely the impact of this being closed, but I am certain that there has been an impact. Maybe not in this immediate area … but likely on other services.”
In her view, the consumption site’s reopening will be a “litmus test” — another chance to compare the before and after of its impact on the community.
Nuthall doubts there will be much change.
“I don’t think it’s going to make a huge amount of difference. The reason is we already had a significant amount of drug use in the area,” he said.
“The reason that’s there is because of the overconcentration of social services, and that’s not just the injection site.”