By Laura Hull –
On June 12, the City of Toronto announced that Toronto Metropolitan University had bought the previously city-owned properties at 277 Victoria Street and 38 Dundas Street East. But under the deal, harm reduction services provided by The Works will continue until spring 2025.
Since August 1989, The Works has operated a Health Canada-approved drug consumption site and distributed harm reduction equipment. Services include supervised drug checking and consumption, nursing, an opioid substitution clinic, injectable opioid agonist treatment, naloxone kits and overdose response training. The Works also does public education, mobile and street outreach, drug alerts and advisories, and supports community agencies.
Despite concern about a harm reduction agency being close to the business centre and the tourist attraction Yonge-Dundas Square, Public Health maintains that “extensive, peer-reviewed research…demonstrates the positive health and safety outcomes of supervised injection services.”
News of the impending move comes after many announced changes to Toronto’s downtown services, including the shutdown of the Novotel homeless shelter last year and the purchase of the Bond Place Hotel, across the street from The Works. Harm reduction and overdose support have been offered at Bond Place since December 2020. According to Valesa Faria, director of the city’s housing secretariat, these services will continue to be exclusively offered to its residents.
Toronto Public Health said St. Michael’s and Toronto Western Hospitals will help find a new location in the city for The Works. “Over the next 24 months,” Public Health said in a media statement to the bridge, it and the city’s CreateTO agency will “ensure continuity of care and minimize impact on residents and TPH clients.”
A university news release quotes Vic Gupta, CEO of CreateTO, as saying proceeds from the building sale will be used to create more affordable housing. TMU plans to use the building for “academic, re- search, creative and entrepreneurial initiatives,” the university said.
