A service that connects men released from the Toronto South Detention Centre in Etobicoke with housing, overdose prevention and peer support has gone from no location to two locations in the month after their lease expired.

As hoped, the John Howard Society of Toronto’s Reintegration Centre has signed a lease with the province that allowed them to occupy three parking spaces by the jail’s discharge exit with a loaned van.

The highly visible space “allowed for us to connect with more (released inmates) in our first days at this site than we had been able to connect with in an entire month prior to the relocation,” John Howard Society executive director Sonya Spencer said in a press release.

In looking for a new location the centre had stressed the importance of being close to the jail in order to reach men in the critical period of time right after they are released, sometimes with no appropriate clothes and nowhere to go.

The van will soon be replaced with a hydro-equipped mobile trailer the centre can convert into office space.

From the van, staff can provide reintegration services through former inmates trained as peer support workers, providing TTC fare, footwear, food, clothing and, in the near future, the use of a phone or a place to charge a mobile phone, Spencer said.

The centre, now known as the John Howard Society of Toronto’s Reintegration Services, was also able to lease a storefront on Lake Shore Blvd. W., between Kipling Ave. and Brown’s Line, where it can also offer services, host meetings and possibly provide up to six single-room occupancy units of housing for some vulnerable clients with funding from the city.

In addition to thanking the jail, the city and the province for their assistance, Spencer specifically thanked Counillor Joe Cressy. “Without his contribution, a fast and viable outcome was likely to have eluded us,” she said in the release.