When men are released from the Toronto South Detention Centre — the much-criticized Etobicoke “superjail” that mostly houses people who have not yet gone to trial — with nowhere to go and wearing summer clothes in the dead of winter, they might end up across the road meeting Barry Corbitt.

Corbitt, 50, is a peer support worker at the John Howard Society’s South Etobicoke Reintegration Centre. His job is to find out what the men need and help them get it amid a housing crisis and overdose crisis.

Most often, the first need is a place to live. Sometimes it’s a referral to mental health services. Sometimes it’s addiction support and a naloxone kit. Sometimes it’s a warm coat and TTC fare. Sometimes it’s all the above.

But at the end of the month, the centre’s lease is up and the program that was hailed as pioneering when it first opened in 2014 will no longer have a location by the jail. So far, the centre has not found an interim solution to keep its peer support workers nearby.

“Proximity is king,” Corbitt stressed in an interview. If the service is right there, he said, then odds are a person leaving jail will “just take a risk and come in.”

The moments after someone is released from jail are critical — people are anxious and nervous, said Amber Kellen, the John Howard Society’s Director of Community Initiatives, Policy and Research. “It can be life or death in some cases.”

In the case of Bradley Chapman, a Toronto man who became homeless after cycling in and out of jail, it ended in death. An inquest into Chapman’s 2015 death from acute opioid toxicity concluded in December.

The inquest’s recommendations specifically include providing ongoing and sustainable funding for the Reintegration Centre and similar services, and providing “appropriate, affordable and sufficient space” for the centre in very close proximity to the jail.

The centre is operating with two three-year funding grants from the city and province. Kellen hopes a temporary solution can be found that would allow the centre to operate out of a trailer or vehicle loaned from the city, a private company or another community agency that could be parked in the jail’s parking lot, or on nearby property owned by the province.

“We would be willing to entertain any and all solutions that would allow us to keep a roof over our head and meet people when they get out,” she said, adding the opioid overdose crisis makes it especially important to be nearby when people are released.

Kellen said the centre spent a year looking for alternative space but little appropriate and affordable office space is available in the industrial area where the jail is located.

She said that if the weather were warmer they would have considered a tent, similar to the Moss Park overdose prevention site, but that’s not feasible in winter.

In the long-term, she hopes to have a mobile unit operating out of an RV that would allow the centre to move to where it’s needed and adjust to changing release procedures that may come with the use of video bail hearings and the move to a consolidated downtown courthouse in 2022.

The centre serves between 400 and 500 people a year, Kellen said, but demand has been up in the last few months, with more than 65 clients in December, almost all of whom were homeless. The John Howard Society has found that a third or more of people released from jail are homeless and, amid what advocates are calling a humanitarian crisis, it’s just getting worse, said Kellen.

There is no men’s shelter located near the jail.

The City of Toronto is in communication with the centre and “will continue to support and work with them,” said Greg Seraganian, the manager of partnerships and community outreach.

Progressive Conservative MPP Christine Hogarth, who represents the Etobicoke-Lakeshore riding where the jail is located, said she has been working with the centre and the provincial Ministry of Community Safety and Correctional Services to find a solution.

“I am pleased that a collaborative solution is being developed,” she said in a statement Wednesday, but did not offer specifics of the solution.

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MCSCS does provide discharge planners to help inmates with mental health and addiction issues transition to the community but the program is voluntary, said spokesperson Andrew Morrison.

When Corbitt was released from jail he said he felt deep despair and depression. “I felt like the only person in the world. That no one gave a f--- about me. A lot of people don’t understand that because they haven’t been through it,” he said.

“I usually MacGyvered my way through life,” he said. “After a while, you are too damn exhausted to MacGyver anymore. So our role is to stop you from MacGyvering and start you in the right direction,” he said.

His goal as a peer support worker is to provide the ongoing support that he didn’t get when he was released from jail.

“To be honest, if I had support such as the reintegration centre and other things I would have been a different person a lot sooner,” he said.