A day after the landlord of 372 York St. backed out of plans to allow a supervised consumption facility on the site, the Middlesex London Health Unit has said at least half a dozen other locations are now on the table.
The new offers were made after the landowner of the health unit's preferred site pulled the lease option on Thursday.
"It came a bit out of left field," said Dr. Chris Mackie, medical officer of health and CEO of the Middlesex-London Health Unit. "This has been a real rollercoaster where opportunities have come up and disappeared very quickly. So it wasn't a total shock that things would change dramatically but it is definitely a disappointment."
The health unit had submitted an application to Health Canada last month asking that it be allowed to host the facility at 372 York St. But the proposed site was quickly met with pushback from those who four days earlier had announced plans to create a $20-million small business hub, known as Venture London, within the Free Press building across the street.
From that controversy, the strip mall at 120 York St. was proposed as a second option. The property, which is only one block from Budweiser Gardens and the Covent Garden Market, is owned by Shmuel Farhi, the main investor in Venture London.
Since losing the property at 372 York St., Mackie said he has not been in contact with Farhi Holdings Corp. about the York St.and Talbot St. location. But in their last discussions, the site was still an option. Mackie hopes to speak with Farhi within the next couple of days.
In the meantime, the health unit will continue to examine the other possible locations that have arisen.
"Some of them are more feasible than others," said Mackie. "There are definitely two or three that we are pursuing that could work if everything else falls into place."
Figures released by the Public Health Agency of Canada last December indicate that the opioid crisis continues to worsen nationally and London is not immune.
"We have had nearly 400 deaths over the past ten years due to overdose alone, let alone all the infectious complications of injection drug use," said Mackie. "This is a really critical service. It is obviously not going to solve the underlying issues that are driving our drug crisis, which are social and economic issues, but it will be a really important part of the picture. It will keep some people alive and it will connect people with services that they need to get their lives back on track."
London's permanent supervised consumption facility will provide a supervised environment in which people with addictions can consume narcotics under the supervision of a health care professional. There would also be aftercare and interaction with staff who can provide clients with information regarding counselling, treatment, and housing.
"It is really important for people to recognize we are not going to be putting this in a place where it is going to cause problems. We are actually going where problems are already there and trying to solve those problems," said Mackie. "This sort of service has strong research showing that it gets needle waste off the streets, it gets problematic injection drug use off the street, and so we are very confident we will be able to set this service up in a way that helps whatever neighbourhood it ends up going into."
While health unit officials work to establish the permanent facility, the temporary overdose prevention site (TOPS) at 186 King St. will continue to operate. Since TOPS opened its doors on February 12, it has recorded 1,414 visits and only three overdoses, none of which ended in death, Mackie tweeted Monday.
