A team of medical professionals are working at the transitional housing complex on Lorraine Street 24/7 to help ready its chronically homeless residents for permanent community housing.
Two of the doctors behind the Health Sciences North-staffed Lotus Program which operates out of the centre explained the effort during last week’s community and emergency services committee meeting of city council.
They also explained the motivations behind the effort, highlighting such statistics as a 135-per-cent increase in emergency department visits among the city’s homeless population during the last five years.
The transitional housing complex is intended as an 18-month program with a six-month follow-up.
“It’s a short-term place to stay where we enable folks to identify the goals they need to reach in order to transition from surviving on the streets toward living independently,” Dr. Tara Leary told city council members.
Reaching this end goal “takes a large team of diverse talents and skillsets,” she said, with nurses, social workers, psychiatrists, primary care addictions specialists, addictions psychiatrists, mental health and addictions workers and peer support filling out staff ranks.
“The model is based on people being housed prior to them stabilizing and addressing their comorbidities,” she said, describing residents as carrying trimorbidities which include problems associated with being chronically unhoused — physical and mental health, as well as substance use issues.
“The global aim is to empower individuals to see and to achieve a life beyond substance use,” she said.
A smaller version of the current program operated out of a temporary space prior to relocating to the recently opened Lorraine Street complex, where its first 10 residents moved in on July 21.
Since the move-in, they’ve shifted two program graduates to permanent community housing, and an additional two are lined up for housing as it becomes available. There are currently 23 people living in the 40-unit building, where operations are slowly ramping up.
Once people graduate from the program, they receive six months of follow-up service from Lotus Program staff, including the same support as transitional housing residents receive.
An ongoing challenge will be shoring up housing for program graduates to shift into, Dr. Natalie Aubin said, citing this as an issue they’ve already experienced.
Pulling aside one unnamed resident’s experience, Aubin shared statistics highlighting one person’s medical system needs one year prior to Lotus Program admission and one year afterward. The year prior saw them make 35 health care visits through Health Sciences North alone, including 29 emergency department visits. The year after saw them make three health care visits, all of which were to the emergency department.
Leary said they’re working on securing a data-sharing agreement with city emergency responders and police so they can better report on the broader impacts of services provided.
“Data needs to drive the decisions that we make, particularly because many of the areas we work in can be very emotional and they can be divisive and they’re certainly political at times,” Leary said.
The hope is that this will all lead toward successful advocacy, Ward 9 Coun. Deb McIntosh said.
“I’m hoping that the province sees what a wonderful model we have here of working together and that they’ll continue to fund not only what we have here, but the next step and that we’ll work collaboratively again on the next step,” McIntosh said.
During their presentation, the doctors cited gaps in service as it relates to not only available housing (the city’s current waitlist for subsidized housing is almost 2,000 households), but also services for those who don’t find success through the transitional housing efforts.
City staff have also estimated a need for at least two additional similarly sized transitional housing complexes in Greater Sudbury.
Provincial funding for the transitional housing complex came earlier this year and has only been guaranteed for three years.
The Lotus Program is a collaboration between Health Sciences North and the city. It operates under harm reduction and housing-first philosophies.
The Health Sciences North website describes the program as “providing safe, non-judgemental and comprehensive support to help individuals achieve stability and independence.”
It’s open to people aged 16 and older who are chronically homeless (at least six months) with mental health and addictions needs, those included on the city’s by-name list (homeless count, which cites 275 people as being actively homeless as of September) and “motivated to engage in programming and skill-building.”
Participants are given:
- A furnished suite with a private bathroom
- Both communal meals and support to access food in the community
- Support with physical and mental health care needs
- Goal setting
- Supports developing skills for activities of daily living
- Psychoeducational groups, counselling as needed
- Medication support if required
- Legal support if required
- Appointment assistance if required
- Support accessing and navigating community services
Among the statistics shared last week to help put the necessity of transitional housing into context, the doctors cited a 135-per-cent jump in emergency department visits among the city’s homeless community during the past five years. This represented almost 2,000 visits in 2023 by 521 people, 11 per cent of whom younger than 25 years of age.
Nearly a quarter of 2023 visits (441) were by 10 people.
Accidental overdoses are the leading case of death in Greater Sudbury for people aged 49 and younger, accounting for 32.7 per cent of deaths (provincially, it’s 21.5 per cent) between 2020-23.
Tyler Clarke covers city hall and political affairs for Sudbury.com.