Neighbours of potential drug consumption site fear ‘scary situation’

Anger over potential consumption site location From CTV Kitchener's Daryl Morris: Neighbours of a Kitchener building that may become a supervised consumption site aren't happy about it.

While proposed locations of supervised drug consumption sites in Cambridge have been loudly and publicly opposed, resistance is also brewing to the one known potential location in Kitchener.

Regional public health officials plan to open one consumption site near downtown Kitchener and another around the Galt core. Two potential sites have been identified in each area.

One of the potential sites in Kitchener has not been disclosed publicly due to a lack of confirmation about its availability.

The other option being considered in Kitchener is 115 Water Street North, a two-storey home owned by The Working Centre. It would be renovated and leased by the Region of Waterloo.

Irene Pedersen, who lives two houses away, says news of the proposed location came as “quite a shock” to her.

She says she has never seen any needles or other evidence of drug use in the neighbourhood, and is concerned about how a consumption site could affect a nearby home for people with mental and physical disabilities, office building that includes after-school English tutoring, and park.

“(Drug users) are going to go down (the) street … and where are we going to walk?” she says.

“It’s going to be really a scary situation.”

Pedersen’s concerns are echoed by Theresa Tercer, who owns a hair salon across the street from the potential consumption site location.

“My concern is the safety of myself as well as my clients,” she says.

Tercer says the neighbourhood has had issues in the past with squatters, drug dealing and prostitution, but has been improving in recent years. She says she’s worried that her customers might stay away because of fears about activity that could be going on nearby, and that users might hide needles in bushes where they could be found by children or seniors.

Public health officials say one of the benefits of supervised consumption sites is that all needles can be tracked and properly disposed of, instead of ending up in the wider community.

Tercer is part of a group which has started a petition asking local politicians to ensure that no supervised consumption site is created at 115 Water Street North.

Phil Gorman, who lives around the corner, says he thinks the site should be located closer to the downtown core, where more overdose-related emergencies occur.

“People are not going to come this far to do the things they need to do to be safe … or they might just hang out and go to the parks, and who knows,” he says.

Several people in the neighbourhood also say they’re upset they weren’t consulted about the potential for a consumption site to be located near their homes and businesses. Tercer says she found out about it through a customer at her salon, who had overheard somebody talking about it at a restaurant.

Public health officials say public consultation would have been difficult to pursue before potential locations were made public, and is a large component of the next phase of the consumption site study, which will run through the summer.

Grace Bermingham, the health unit’s manager of information planning and harm reduction, says the aim of the consultation is “to determine what the neighbourhood thinks about the locations and what hopes they might have should a recommendation be provided that an SCS be located there” and to answer questions about the nature of consumption sites.

“There are a lot of myths about what these services might look like,” she said.

Details of the consultation process will be made public in the near future, Bermingham said, but they will include an openness to considering other potential locations. Any location identified would be weighed based on the same criteria that led to the selection of 115 Water Street North and the other three potential locations.

Whether any supervised consumption sites are opened in Waterloo Region is contingent on the province continuing to offer funding for such initiatives.

With reporting by Daryl Morris