North Park residents are worried about a new facility coming to their neighbourhood to help those living on the 900-block of Pandora and other areas around Victoria.
The city announced last month it’s providing $1.8 million in operating funds to SOLID Outreach Society to run a 5,200-square-foot “access hub” on Dowler Place, offering food and referrals for housing and long-term medical needs for the unhoused.
Residents living near the facility at 2155 Dowler Pl. are pushing back on the location, citing a lack of information about what’s coming and concerns about safety. About 1,500 people have signed a petition opposing the opening of the facility.
Leann Trenchard is one of many who is worried about the changes the hub might bring to her neighbourhood.
Trenchard, who lives just around the corner from the space, said she doesn’t know enough about the facility, and worries it could turn the area into something that resembles the 900-block of Pandora Avenue, where people are sheltering in tents and using drugs.
“We just feel it’s not a safe move at this time, particularly to move these people into a residential neighbourhood,” she said, citing an incident last week in which a paramedic on Pandora was kicked in the face by a man he was trying to help.
Advocates have said the man suffers from seizures that cause him to become disoriented and sometimes violent.
Trenchard said she doesn’t feel safe walking on the 900-block of Pandora, and worries she’ll feel the same way on her own street when the access hub opens.
But Jack Phillips, executive director of SOLID, disputed claims that neighbours are in the dark about what’s coming, saying SOLID has held community engagement meetings to connect with people in the neighbourhood.
Like SOLID’s needle exchange and drop-in and a drug-checking facility at the corner of Cook and North Park streets, the access hub will have street ambassadors who ensure people don’t congregate outside or set up tents to shelter on the street, he said.
SOLID’s drop-in centre hosts about 500 people a day, but people in the area would have no idea, because the street ambassadors are successful in preventing people from gathering on the street, Phillips said.
Phillips lives with his two children, ages 7 and 10, between the two buildings owned by SOLID at the corner of Cook and North Park, and said he’s not bringing services to his neighbourhood that will increase risk to his own children or others.
Those opposing the facility are relying on “fear-based messaging” and misinformation, he said.
The petition opposing the facility claims 2155 Dowler Pl. is 400 feet from a school, but the closest public school, George Jay Elementary School, is about one kilometre away. A driving school and a private school for travellers ages 14 and older to learn English are nearby.
The access hub is also not a supervised consumption site, as some in the community are calling it, he said. People might use drugs inside the space, as some do in SOLID’s drop-in centre on North Park Street without affecting neighbours, he said.
Phillips, who spends time on the 900-block of Pandora every day, said many of the people living there in tents had traumatic childhoods, often involving abuse.
“We can judge ourselves as a society by how we treat our most vulnerable people,” he said.
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