Monday’s official announcement that Barrie would be one of 18 additional municipalities to get a Homelessness and Addiction Recovery Treatment (HART) Hub brought together dozens of Simcoe County politicians today to celebrate the news in person.
“The impact in our community is going to be significant. There is no question the challenges we face in the area whether it's homelessness or addiction,” Barrie-Springwater-Oro-Medonte MPP Doug Downey said during a press conference this morning at Barrie City Hall.
Numerous politicians, as well as representatives from a variety of local social service agencies involved in creating the application for the HART Hub, attended the news conference, which provided no new details aside from what was already announced yesterday.
Neither Monday’s provincial announcement nor Tuesday’s news conference included proposed locations for the HART Hub.
The province's goal is to have the new hubs operational by April 1.
Barrie’s HART Hub, which is expected to be similar to existing models in Ontario that have provided people with care, will "reflect regional priorities by connecting people with complex needs to comprehensive treatment and preventative services," according to Monday's release.
Planning efforts to create the HART Hub in Barrie are underway and the proposed services to be offered could include:
- Primary care
- Indigenous health and wellness services
- Mental health and addictions services including bed-based addictions treatment, bed-based supportive treatment, Rapid Access Addiction Medicine
- Peer support
- Mental health and addictions supportive housing and transitional housing
- Vocational, employment and support services.
Mina Fayez-Bahgat, the County of Simcoe's general manager of social and community service, called the project “incredibly important.”
“We are incredibly grateful that we were selected to be one of the few HART Hubs in Ontario," he said.
"For us, we want this to be a community-based effort and this is why we convened a huge, broad table of community service providers (and) community-invested interest groups so that we make sure the services we set up and deliver are primarily focused on those who need it the most," he explained.
“Treatment and recovery, and people with tri-morbid health issues, is a key driver to homelessness right now," Fayez-Bahgat added. "By being able to offer things we never had before — like treatment and recovery programs — before you get into a co-ordinated supportive housing program is huge, because you will actually see people latch on to those services and be successful rather than them falling into and out of systems as they are right now.”
As for why Barrie was the right location to locate the hub in the county, Fayez-Bahgat said that was a “data-informed” decision.
“Right now, it’s clear that Barrie does represent a significant portion of the homelessness happening across the county,” he said.
The application also included two “spokes” to the hub, said Fayez-Bahgat, including one in Orilla and the other in Midland.
“Between all three, the county believes they will have encompassed a regional service system. Even while it’s in Barrie, we know it will serve a system and take a regional approach for all those who need it," he added.
From a local "on-the-ground perspective,” the City of Barrie has been asking for more long-term services to be available to help people in the treatment and rehabilitation side, said Mayor Alex Nuttall.
“Those pleas, I don’t think, went unnoticed. I think it took a period of time to figure out how to do it,” he said. “For Barrie, it’s just so important that we start meeting the individual where they are at, and not just where a person is overnight. That’s the bare minimum.
"What we really need to do is turn the page to how to help that person who is now getting that night and help them get into a long life of a more positive lifestyle," Nuttall added.
Despite the application being officially approved and the funding set to be deposited into county coffers, where the HART Hub will be located has yet to be confirmed.
“Our vision wasn’t one location but a sequence of locations that would happen over time and opportunity," Fayez-Baghat said.
"We are trying to align our development strategies on the permanent housing side, our modular strategies for the supportive housing side and we are trying to create new space for the critical care side, which comes first and that will be closely directed by the hospital partners."
Timing-wise, an April start date has been instructed for the transition into the clinical services, which is the goal unless the province directs them otherwise.
“That will likely be a 90- to 120-day effort to get into full capacity and operating. Thereafter, that would give us enough time to work concurrently on the supportive housing that comes next because you need to have critical pathways to housing,” Fayez-Baghat said.
That would take approximately 18 to 24 months after which he said the county will be able to open up some of the developments that are slated in Barrie and across the county to be permanent places of supportive housing for those individuals participating in the program.
While Fayez-Baghat admits he was cautiously optimistic about the chance of the local application being approved, plans had already been made to pursue some new opportunities with the partnerships created through the application process on a smaller scale had things not come to fruition.
“We felt the primary group of service providers put together a really strong and well-thought-out application, so our confidence level was strong, but, of course, you have to have some sort of careful optimism,” he said. “Having key partnerships with service health providers is a pivotal tool to successful housing outcomes for those experiencing homelessness.
"At the very least, we built a foundation that would lead us forward whether we had a hub or not.”
