CALGARY—After months of consultation over a proposed mobile supervised drug consumption site in southeast Calgary, one community organization is seeking legal representation to oppose the facility opening in their neighbourhood.

HIV Community Link met with residents in the fall to discuss a mobile supervised consumption site proposed to operate on a set schedule between the East Village, which borders downtown Calgary’s eastside, and Southview, which lies just east of Inglewood and the Bow River, with International Ave. S.E. running along its north side.

Members of the Southview Community Association have long pushed back against this idea, arguing the facility would be more useful somewhere else. On Tuesday night, members met for a special general meeting where they voted to allocate funding toward legal representation to formally oppose the facility opening its doors.

Speaking for the group, resident Jean Darius said his organization isn’t opposed to these facilities, but argued Southview doesn’t have a large enough drug problem to warrant this site opening there. He argued it would be more useful in communities with higher rates of recorded overdoses.

“We keep coming back to this point where (HIV Community Link representatives) don’t live in our community, so why are they insisting on putting this in our community?” Darius said.

The proposed site would be the second official supervised consumption facility in Calgary. The first opened in January at the Sheldon M. Chumir Centre. These are legally sanctioned centres providing a supervised place for people to consume drugs. But this has upset Calgarians who don’t want a centre like this in their backyard.

Darius said the group will first hire a lawyer to prepare a letter to the Alberta’s health minister arguing HIV Community Link hasn’t completed proper consultation with the neighbourhood, the proposed location isn’t reasonably justified to hold the site, and the need for this facility isn’t based on information applicable to Southview.

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“The idea that there is a problem in Southview and we need to have this in Southview, that really aggravates some of our residents. Because they’re showing right there they’re not listening to what we’re saying,” Darius said.

But HIV Community Link hasn’t yet finalized a location for the facility. The organization’s executive director, Leslie Hill, said the Calgary-East area has been hit particularly hard by the overdose crisis, with the second-highest reported rate of overdoses of any local geographic area in Alberta.

“Our mandate is to implement a supervised consumption service that will be effective in saving as many lives as possible,” Hill said in a written statement.

“To date, we have met with approximately 300 individuals in Calgary-East, as well as working with the relevant community associations to understand their perspectives.”

Hill said that once a location is finalized, HIV Community Link will work with residents and businesses in the area to address any issues that could arise and ensure the service is safe and successful.

HIV Community Link said it already meets monthly with representatives from Alberta Health Services, the City of Calgary, the Calgary Police Service, the University of Calgary, and more, on a Calgary Coalition on Supervised Consumption.

The proposed spot in Southview is near the Sunrise Community Link centre, which provides support for people experiencing poverty or other forms of adversity in their lives.

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Darius said his community group wants to make that area more lively, and that this proposed site would be counterproductive to that goal. He added that the proposed location on the west side of Southview is too far from neighbourhoods that have more recorded overdoses, such as Forest Lawn and Forest Heights.

“Our opposition isn’t against the idea of helping those in need, but it’s against putting it in the community of Southview because the problem doesn’t exist,” Darius said.

Katrina Milaney, a University of Calgary professor, was a principle investigator on research projects in central and southern Alberta that informed the program models for supervised consumption sites in Calgary and Medicine Hat. She said the lack of visibility for these drug problems can impact the perception about how big the issue really is in specific communities.

“I think the reason people think that it’s not an issue in their community is because people are overdosing in their home,” Milaney said. “Just because you don’t see it on the street, doesn’t mean it’s not happening in their community.”

The opposition toward the facility has been so vocal in Southview that Calgary-East MLA Robyn Luff said she’s received more letters, phone calls and emails about it than any other issue during in her term in office.

“I’m a general supporter of supervised consumption, I think it’s a really important public health policy. But I can say without reservation that most of the people who live in Southview don’t feel that the location is the right location,” Luff said.

“There is no doubt that there is a need in east Calgary for these kinds of services, but if you look at a heat map of where most overdoses are happening, they’re not happening in Southview, they’re happening further east.”

But Milaney pointed out that supervised consumption sites are an evidence-based success story in other communities. And in Calgary so far, the current downtown site in the Sheldon M. Chumir Centre hasn’t had a negative effect on that community.

“People tend to make assumptions that having services like this in your community will increase crime and increase debris in their neighbourhood, and that’s simply not true,” Milaney said.

“What we see with supervised consumption sites is, particularly now that we have the Sheldon Chumir, there hasn’t been a dramatic change to happen to that community in a negative way.”

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