The city is looking at a property in the east end of Guelph as a possible location for a proposed harm reduction housing program.

At Monday’s committee of the whole, council voted 12-1 in favour — Coun. Dan Gibson was the sole vote against — of having city staff investigate what would be needed to set up this new housing at 106 Beaumont Cres., a city-owned property east of Victoria Road and north of York Road.

Coun. Rodrigo Goller, who brought the motion forward, said one of the biggest issues facing the project was finding out where to put it, and this property — which had been identified as an excess property in a city report last month — could fit the bill.

“This is a group of community organizations that is looking to provide a much-needed resource in our community, to essentially help people get off the streets (These are) people who don't have somewhere to live,” he said, referring to the working group looking to get the project up and running.

“If we find that it may not be a great fit, it's going to be city property and we can always see to change that down the road, but it does get us going to address a very pressing need in our community.”

Coun. Bob Bell, who has been working with the Wellington Guelph Drug Strategy to help develop this plan, said the location would work because it’s where many people who the program is looking to help already are.

“We have people being evicted from city property along the river and from the (future Guelph) Innovation District, and we have no place to send them to,” he said.

“The net result to the general community, I think, will be a reduction in costs because there's less medical costs, less occupancy costs in hotels, and it will be easier to track and service.”

While generally supportive of having staff look at the Beaumont property as an option, not all councillors were on board with definitively picking a location just yet.

“People that are residing in these in these container homes could actually be experiencing some ghettoization or stigmatization as well and this is this is a serious problem for me,” Coun. Phil Allt said.