Employees and owners of the tightly packed businesses in the three blocks surrounding the Kensington Market Overdose Prevention Site are divided on its impact on the neighbourhood and whether the province is doing the right thing by closing it next year.
The Kensington site is one of 10 safe consumption facilities within 200 metres of a school or daycare the Ontario government is shuttering.
The site opened at 260 Augusta Ave. in 2019 and is set to close by March 2025, along with four others located in the City of Toronto.
Premier Doug Ford has said the decision to close the sites was made on public safety grounds. When the plan was announced in August, he called them “the worst thing that could ever happen to a community,” pointing to discarded needles and other neighbourhood disturbances.
Lizbeth Orea, an employee at Dolce Gelato one block south of the Kensington Market facility, approves of the plan to close the facility.
She said people don’t feel safe in the area anymore, leading to slower business at night.
According to Orea, people she believes are unhoused occasionally steal tips from the store.
Due to safety concerns, two female employees are now scheduled to close the gelato shop in the evenings instead of one, which doesn’t make a lot of business sense at quiet times of year, she said.
Orea thinks Kensington shops will become busier and people will feel safer once the site closes.
A business owner who has operated a store in the area for over two decades said he’s ready to move his enterprise to a new city next year. He wished to remain anonymous due to fears of retaliation against his store.
He said he has watched the lunchtime rush slow down and numerous businesses move on due to what he described as an all-time high of break-ins, violence, screaming and garbage.
“I can’t have my 13-year-old daughter work part-time here by herself … [It’s] too dangerous,” he said.
In late 2019 — the same year the safe consumption site opened — Fresh Collective, a women’s boutique, closed its doors after 21 years in Kensington Market.
The owner, Laura-Jean Bernhardson, said garbage, loud arguments and loitering were already commonplace before the site was operational.
She said she would find drug paraphernalia in the flowers planted outside the boutique and urination in its doorway.
Bernhardson connects these issues to St. Stephen’s Community House, the non-profit agency where the overdose prevention site operates. Yet the entrepreneur said she recognizes the importance of social services.
“People have a right to live, even if they are using drugs. They don’t need to be punished by getting overdoses and infections,” she said.
However, Bernhardson said it’s a complex problem that requires more management.
“They need to make sure the neighbourhood is taken care of as well,” she said.
Others who work in Kensington Market agree crime has been around for longer than the safe consumption site.
The consumption site’s supervisor, Tina Estwick, said crime happens all over the city and there has never been a shooting or stabbing outside the overdose prevention facility.
According to Toronto Police Service data for Kensington Market-Chinatown, the assault rate was lower in the three years after the site opened compared to the four years preceding it. Other than a spike in 2021, the shooting rate in the neighbourhood has also followed a similar trend.
Estwick said “some [businesses] are very, very upset and distraught” about the planned closure of the supervised consumption site and many neighbours attended a Sept. 13 rally to support keeping it open.
Michael Xie works at Laya Skye Jewelry nearby. He hasn’t witnessed much theft while working.
However, he said a seemingly intoxicated man stole a ring last month after exposing a knife under his shirt.
This shocked Xie because it was a rare occurrence. According to him, teenagers are responsible for more theft than anyone else at some of the local stores.
Others, like an employee at a nearby cannabis shop, said Kensington Market has always been a neighbourhood of “misfits.”
According to him, most neighbours are concerned about what will happen to the site’s current clients after it closes.
“These people are not unwelcome. They’re welcome to stay as long as everyone is respecting the neighbourhood,” said the employee, who also requested neither he nor his place of work be named.
Overall, he feels people in the market are on two distinct sides that don't “mix with each other,” with some eagerly awaiting the closure of the site.
Others who work in the area didn’t know the site existed.
Ellen Barton opened Aunt Thelma’s Beauties two years ago and was not aware of the overdose prevention site one block west of her store.
“It doesn’t affect me whatsoever,” she said.
The co-owner of Arch Café, Ali Sobati, said the real problem is the widening gap between economic classes that leads to an unhoused population, many of whom grapple with addiction.
