Maison Benoît Labre safe consumption site paused due to lack of trained staff

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Maison Benoît Labre, the safe drug consumption and transition housing centre that opened in mid-April in St-Henri, has paused its safe injection and inhalation services and its drop-in centre for five days as it deals with a staffing crisis.

On Wednesday, the organization announced on its website and social media that it is temporarily reducing its services, “due to a lack of manpower to adequately meet demand.”

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The centre on Greene Ave. near Doré St. includes 36 studio apartments for people who are transitioning out of homelessness. These are all currently occupied and remain fully supported. But the centre’s safe drug consumption service, which is normally open Monday to Friday from 8 a.m. to 3 p.m., and its drop-in centre will be closed until Monday, June 10. Those seeking services are being referred to other centres.

“This short break will enable the team to train and integrate its new recruits to ensure the success of the project,” the notice said.

The centre’s director, Andréane Désilets, told The Gazette that in the past couple of weeks, nine people have left her 60-member staff. Some left for health reasons, others were university students who had been working part time during the school year. Others were simply exhausted from the demands of the job.

“Homelessness is a very particular milieu to work in, especially in recent years,” she said. “The issues are complex, so you have to be well trained and we are taking the time to train our team well. Now we are working on a plan so that we won’t have to relive this kind of situation again; and do what we can to avoid a larger break in service.”

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The centre has recruited nine new employees, but they have not been fully trained and integrated, she said. While these new staff members are being trained, 14 experienced employees from two other emergency shelters that have recently closed — the Richochet and Le Coeur de l’Île — are helping to keep the Maison’s services going, she said.

She said the situation is “far from ideal,” especially during this crucial startup period. On top of the staffing problems, there have been multiple problems with the new building, she added.

The Maison has hired two security guards who will remain in place until June 21. The local police station is monitoring the area, she said, and the city’s special brigade of social and intervention workers, known as the Équipe mobile de médiation et d’intervention sociale (ÉMMIS) will be in the area to keep conflicts with residents to a minimum. She added that the centre has a “Good Neighbour Committee,” which is there to resolve issues and organize street and schoolyard cleanup operations.

But the news about the suspension of some services only confirms the concerns of some St-Henri residents that the new centre has bitten off more than it can chew.

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Michael MacKenzie, who lives near the Maison Benoît Labre, is among those who question the wisdom of opening a safe injection and inhalation service near a school, a playground and in the same building that offers housing to those who may be trying to leave addiction behind them.

He wonders how an exemption was granted to the site to open a safe injection and inhalation site without proof of adequate staffing. He said the fact that the centre has only hired security guards until June 21, when school is over, makes no sense, since kids use the park all summer, as do summer camps.

“They don’t even know our community well enough to know where our children are and when. The idea that this problem somehow disappears for the summer is completely out of touch,” he said.

Désilets denied the centre opened without adequate staffing, noting they were fully staffed in mid-April when it opened.

He said he has no issue with the centre’s transitional housing project, but has found that the safe injection and inhalation service has attracted a population to the neighbourhood that was not there before.

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A spokesperson for the mayor’s office said the city is doing what it can to help Maison Benoît Labre re-open its services as quickly as possible.

“The departure of employees from the Maison Benoît Labre bares witness to the immense pressure that the community milieu is under in the context of the vulnerability crisis,” said Simon Charron, a spokeperson for Mayor Valérie Plante on homelessness issues. “An increased presence of the EMMIS intervention team and the SPVM is planned around the organization during this period.”

He said safe consumption centres are becoming more desperately needed as the housing crisis deepens.

“The street is not a home or a medical clinic and it’s not by reducing resources that we will reduce the number of vulnerable people in public spaces. On the contrary, we are working with the organization and the health-care network to support the goal of getting it fully reopened as soon as possible.”

Charron said the city administration understands that having this kind of facility near a school causes concerns.

“We understand it is worrisome. We know it is beside a school. It is not the only example of a resource, with or without supervised injection, that worries the residents around it. But it is a necessity to have more and more resources to bring vulnerable people inside, whether it is people experiencing homelessness or for those with mental health or addiction issues. We are in a crisis and these people, if they have no roof and no services, will necessarily find themselves in public areas. And that situation would be worse” than having safe consumption sites in a neighbourhood.

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He said it makes sense to put these resources in areas where vulnerable people are, rather than far from residential and commercial areas, where they will not be used.

But MacKenzie said the safe drug consumption service has brought drug users to his neighbourhood who were not there in the past.

“For the mayor’s office to say the services need to go where the needs are … The folks being served here weren’t in our community before. The need was brought here. I’m not speaking of the people who are receiving the transitional supportive housing, I am speaking about the people who are drawn to the day services of the centre, who are now living outside the centre. We’ve seen a real concentration of dealers descend on the community, and a dramatic shift” in the neighbourhood’s level of safety, he said.

mlalonde@postmedia.com

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