Toronto will get four new homelessness and addiction recovery facilities as part of the Ford government's $378-million plan to close some safe injection sites and transition to a new model of care.
The four new sites, dubbed homelessness and addiction recovery treatment (HART) hubs, will not provide safe consumption services. Instead, they’ll offer a range of services including primary medical care, mental health and addiction supports, social services, connections to employment opportunities and some housing.
The move was met with criticism from advocates and health groups who warned closing safe injection sites would lead to preventable deaths and cause more public drug use.
The new Toronto hubs will be located at 168 Bathurst St. in Queen West, 465 Dundas St. E. in Regent Park and 1156 Danforth Ave. The fourth site will be led by Toronto Public Health and "respond to urgent and complex health needs in Toronto’s downtown core" but its exact location has yet to be announced.
Thursday’s announcement was for nine new HART hubs across the province. The Ford government promised to open 19 and the other 10 will be unveiled at a later date.
The province aims to have all 19 hubs open by April 1. The new sites will each get one-time funding to help with startup costs but the province has yet to finalize the exact amount.
In August, the Ford government announced plans to close 10 safe injection sites across the province within 200 metres of schools and childcare centres by March 31. It legislated the change last month.
Five of those sites are in Toronto, including the Parkdale Queen West Community Health Centre at 168 Bathurst St., the Regent Park Community Health Centre at 465 Dundas St. E., the South Riverdale Community Health Centre at 955 Queen St. E., The Works at 277 Victoria St. and the Kensington Market Overdose Prevention Site at 260 Augusta Ave.
Two of the four new sites opening in Toronto — at 465 Dundas St. E. and 168 Bathurst St. — are in the same buildings that currently house safe injection sites slated for closure.
The future of the South Riverdale Community Health Centre
The Danforth address will be the site of the new South Riverdale Community Health Centre hub, according to documents provided by the Ministry of Health.
The Riverdale organization currently runs two health clinics at 955 Queen St. E. and 1245 Danforth Ave.
The 2023 fatal shooting of bystander Karolina Huebner-Makurat near the Queen East clinic, which ran a safe injection site, prompted an outcry from the neighbourhood and Queen’s Park’s crackdown.
Both locations will remain community health clinics. The new, provincially funded HART hub at 1156 Danforth Ave. is steps away from the existing clinic at 1245 Danforth Ave.
The South Riverdale Community Health Centre previously said it would prefer to operate a safe injection site alongside the other services offered through HART hubs.
“It would be very beneficial to have the range of the HART hub’s enhanced services, including mental health and substance use treatment, working with the [safe injection site], in order to reach the full population,” the organization said in October.
Safe injection sites, the organization said, are “an essential entry point to healthcare programs and services and an integral component to the continuum of care for people who use drugs.”
What will HART hubs offer?
The new sites will be tailored to neighbourhood needs while broadly offering similar services, the province said. A hub may try to prioritize access to primary care if a certain neighbourhood is lacking.
The 465 Dundas St. site in Regent Park will focus on services for people who have experienced homelessness for over six months. According to provincial government documents, the main site will operate on a “hub and spoke” model by also providing services through partner locations in the community. Those locations have not yet been announced but could include mobile clinics.
The 1156 Danforth Ave. site will also include a drop-in space that offers food, showers and basic supplies through a partnership with St. Michael’s Homes.
The Ford government’s $378-million plan includes money for 375 new supportive housing units but it hasn’t drafted specific plans for where those will be located. Each of the four new Toronto sites unveiled on Thursday aim to provide housing, the provincial documents show.
When Ontario Health Minister Sylvia Jones first announced the HART hub program in August, she cited public safety as the main driver behind the policy.
"Parents are worried about the discarded needles that their children could pick up. Some parents no longer feel comfortable sending their children to the local elementary school or have pulled them out of their local daycare," she said in a speech to municipal politicians.
After the fatal shooting outside the Riverdale clinic in 2023, the province appointed former Centre for Addiction and Mental Health executive Jill Campbell to review the site.
Campbell’s report — which was presented to the government in April 2024 but quietly released months later — said the province should expand safe injection sites because they save lives and made other recommendations to try to address public concern.
There were nearly 530 confirmed and probable overdose deaths in Toronto in 2023, according to city data. There have been over 500 overdose deaths each year since 2020.
Safe injection site users survived an average of nearly six overdoses per day at the 10 soon-to-be-shuttered clinics across Ontario since 2020, federal data shows. No overdose death has ever been reported at a safe injection site anywhere in Canada.
In her annual report released last month, Ontario Auditor General Shelley Spence estimated that the 10 sites being forced to close prevented nearly 1,600 fatal opioid overdoses in 2022-23.
