The provincial HART Hub funding Greater Sudbury is receiving will go toward the 40-unit transitional housing complex on Lorraine Street and an as-yet undefined downtown project.
At $6.3 million million per year for three years, the funding will allow the city to do even more than they’d initially planned, Mayor Paul Lefebvre told Sudbury.com.
This includes operating programming at the Lorraine Street complex for 24 hours per day from the previously proposed 18 (the overnight six-hour balance would have been filled in with security alone without programming).
“It provides a higher-level of service for individuals in our community,” city Children and Social Services director Tyler Campbell told Sudbury.com.
“We know individuals are facing complex needs and multiple barriers to housing, so the additional service will help everyone get transitioned into community-based housing.”
The transitional housing complex is expected to open within the next few months and include wraparound services from medical professionals aimed at helping the chronically homeless find and maintain permanent housing.
Lefebvre and city staff met with local journalists in the Lorraine Street building’s main-floor programming space on Tuesday morning to talk about the province’s HART Hub funding announcement, which was made the previous afternoon.
The provincial program is creating 27 Homelessness and Addictions Recovery Team (HART) Hubs across the province, and they announced on Monday that this would include one in Greater Sudbury.
The local effort is projected to consist of a HARTbeat Heath and Wellness Centre, with “beat” standing for “Building Empowerment and Advancing Treatment.”
Key partners include:
- Monarch Recovery Services
- Shkagamik-Kwe Health Centre
- Health Sciences North
- Canadian Mental Health Association – Sudbury/Manitoulin
- City of Greater Sudbury
- Northern Initiative for Social Action
It’s planned to include primary care, mental health and addictions services (including assessment and system navigation), mental health and addictions supportive housing, social and employment services and services to meet basic needs.
All this, under a goal of “advancing innovative and effective approaches to mental health, addictions and recovery.”
The local HART Hub funding will be divvied between two separate but related efforts, including the transitional housing complex and an as-yet undefined centre in downtown Sudbury.
The transitional housing complex has been years in the works, with the first big step made in 2021, when the federal government pledged $7.4 million toward the project.
When the city broke ground on the $14.4-million project in mid-2023, they anticipated it opening by the end of the year.
On Tuesday, the main floor’s interior appeared largely completed, though Sudbury.com was told that more work needed to be done to be granted occupancy within a few months.
In late 2023, the project’s general contractor, Nomodic Modular Structures, declared bankruptcy, delaying the project by approximately two months. Flex Modular was put in place as the new general contractor.
Also in late 2023, the city was defrauded of approximately $1.5 million when someone impersonating the contractor convinced a city staffer to electronically transfer money to a new account. The city subsequently recovered some of this money through the courts.
Meanwhile, the city has spent the past few years advocating for the province to fund the transitional housing complex’s operational costs, estimated to be $2.5 million annually.
“It shouldn’t be the municipalities on the municipal levy — tax dollars — to provide health-care services, which (the Lorraine Street complex) is,” Lefebvre told Sudbury.com on Tuesday, commending the province for stepping up to the plate.
The city’s elected officials have thrown their support behind the project, and have been funding an Assertive Community Treatment Team of health-care professionals through Health Sciences North. The current team is a smaller-scale version of the group slated to work out of the transitional housing complex, and has been helping 13 people who are chronically homeless at a temporary location.
When the 40-unit building opens, team members and the people they are helping will shift to Lorraine Street, which Lefebvre said will ramp up until it reaches capacity.
“It will include a range of services,” Campbell said. “Anything from addictions support, primary health care, psychiatric care, front-line nursing and peer support.”
The aim, Lefebvre said, will be to ease people who are chronically homeless into permanent community housing, such as the 38-unit Pearl Street affordable housing complex currently under construction.
Although there was some initial blowback from area residents who opposed the Lorraine Street build, Campbell noted that it’s a clinical setting staffed 24/7.
“There are strict rules of entry and exit, so it’s not like we’ll have individuals come in and out on a regular basis, and it’s an opt-in program for individuals, so they have to qualify and want to be in the program.”
As for the as-yet undefined downtown project which is slated to receive a share of the $6.3 million the city is receiving from the province in HART Hub funding, Lefebvre said it’ll be created in the very near future by the city, Health Sciences North and various community partners.
It won’t be a residential program like the transitional housing complex, but will pull together various services under one roof to help those experiencing homelessness and addictions receive the various points of help they need.
The idea, Lefebvre said, is that it would be “more of a central hub where people can go in and not go to eight different places.”
Tyler Clarke covers city hall and political affairs for Sudbury.com.