Toronto shelters with internal supervised injection sites for their residents also affected by provincial ban

Toronto homeless shelters that have been allowing occupants to use street drugs in a supervised internal facility will face the same restrictions as public supervised consumption sites, the province has confirmed — a decision one shelter executive fears will push people to use substances in nearby public spaces instead and risks leaving them to overdose without aid. 
The shelter-based programs, which are restricted to occupants and not available for walk-in users, were rolled out at a handful of shelters and respites in recent years in an effort to combat a surge of overdoses and deaths across the system. Two sites — Seaton House in Moss Park and a Homes First site near the Harbourfront — are within 200 metres of a school or daycare, the radius in which the province intends to bar supervised consumption activity. 
Patricia Mueller, CEO of Homes First, says they haven’t received formal notice that the supervised consumption program operating inside their shelter — run by harm reduction program The Works — will need to end, but with a school across the street, she fears it’s only a matter of time. She worries a closure would mean occupants of the 250-plus-bed shelter struggling with substance use and addiction will instead turn to more isolated places like shelter stairwells, or elsewhere in the community, such as in parks or doorways, without trained staff nearby to intervene in case of an overdose. 
“I think people that live near Bathurst and Lake Shore think ‘Great! This is going to clean up the community!’ But I think it’s going to be far more impactful,” Mueller warned. “Communities will see more literal needles on the streets … There will be more deaths, and it will be traumatizing for communities when they happen in a public area.”
Toronto introduced supervised consumption inside its homeless shelters after overdoses and deaths began to surge during the pandemic. In 2021, city hall recorded more than 1,500 overdoses across its homeless services: listing 1,496 as non-fatal, and 70 as fatal. Supervised consumption services were first introduced at Seaton House at 339 George Street in June 2022, city hall told the Star, then at the Homes First site at 545 Lake Shore Boulevard West in March 2023.
While neither Seaton House nor the Harbourfront shelter was included on the province’s list of facilities that must close following its announcement of the new rules earlier this week, a spokesperson for the provincial health ministry confirmed to the Star that the nonpublic, shelter-based consumption sites would also be required to stop operations if they were near schools or daycares.
“If the Urgent Public Health Needs sites are operating within 200 metres of a school of daycare, if our legislation is passed, they will not be permitted to offer supervised consumption,” Alexandra Adamo, deputy chief of staff to health minister Sylvia Jones, told the Star. 
City hall said staff were still “working to understand the extent of the changes” when asked if it would have to close its shelter-based sites. Meanwhile, Toronto Public Health said in an email it was still reviewing the announcement to “fully understand its implications.”
Two other homeless service sites in Toronto currently offer supervised consumption. One, a respite at 69 Fraser Avenue in Liberty Village, appears to be outside the required 200-metre radius of schools and daycares. The Star was unable to examine the radius for the fourth site, a COVID-19 isolation and recovery shelter that staff only identify as being within Etobicoke. 
City hall, in a statement Thursday, said the idea behind the internal supervised consumption sites was to provide an alternative to shelter occupants using street drugs in public spaces like parks and risking overdosing alone.
“They also help to reduce the incident of discarded needles and public drug use and provide an opportunity for shelter clients to get valuable access to other embedded services such as counselling, mental health and other harm reduction supports,” said a statement from city hall, noting that last year, the program at Seaton House reversed 127 overdoses.
“Without intervention, many of these overdoses could have resulted in fatalities,” spokesperson Elise von Scheel wrote in an email Thursday. 
Five facilities in Toronto are already expected to shutter on account of the new rules, as well as locations in Hamilton, Guelph, Kitchener, Ottawa and Thunder Bay.
“The status quo of drug consumption sites is not working,” Health Minister Sylvia Jones said on Tuesday, vowing $378 million to create 19 “homelessness and addiction recovery treatment” hubs, which the government says will include 375 supportive housing units as well as beds for addiction treatment.
The announcement elicited divided reactions across Toronto, with some who spoke with the Star relieved that facilities would close in their neighbourhoods, while others predicted the shuttering would merely push drug use into public spaces and result in more people dying. 
“If sites are forced to close, we will see more public drug use in our parks and in our laneways,” Toronto Board of Health Chair Chris Moise said Tuesday.
The decision came on the heels of two provincially commissioned reports about a supervised consumption facility on Queen Street East that had come under scrutiny after gunfire erupted outside last summer, killing local mother-of-two Karolina (Caroline) Huebner-Makurat after she was hit by a stray bullet.
Both reviews concluded that supervised consumption should continue, the Star has reported, but with improved community safety supports to address concerns about violence, discarded needles and visible drug deals. 
With files from Robert Benzie, David Rider, Ben Spurr and Raju Mudhar.