Windsor getting new Homelessness and Addiction Recovery Treatment (HART) hub

Windsor will be getting a new Homelessness and Addiction Recovery Treatment (HART) hub, Ontario Minister of Health Sylvia Jones has announced.

The new resource will include new treatment and recovery beds, a transitional housing component and stabilization beds to help bridge people coming out of withdrawal management until they can get into a treatment program, according to Bill Marra, the president and CEO of Hôtel-Dieu Grace Healthcare, one of the partners in the project.

The province is funding the hub to the tune of $6 million per year for three years, Marra said.

"This is a very real investment," he said.

"This is not just augmenting existing services. It's really investing in more beds, more treatment, more recovery."

It will also help fill gaps in the continuum of services, Marra added. 

The new hub is one of 18 across Ontario that the health ministry announced on Monday; it previously announced another nine hubs on Jan. 2.

Details sparse 

The Windsor project is a partnership between Hôtel-Dieu, the Windsor-Essex Community Health Centre, and House of Sophrosyne, a treatment and recovery home for women.

Details on it remain sparse because the partners haven't yet finalized an agreement with the province, Marra said.

He could not say exactly how many beds would be added for which services or what the exact timeline for the roll-out would be.

The partners have, however, identified locations for the new beds, he added. 

"It's leveraging existing space with existing partners," Marra said.

"So it's adding more capacity to the system."

Marra said the three–year timeline provides plenty of time to collect data, do research and analyze indicators of success, such as the number of people who avoid emergency room visits, the volume of people using shelters and the number of people who commit criminal offences then reoffend.

He believes the $6 million per year for three years will be enough to meet the need in the city, but the partners are ready to go back to the province if it faces funding pressures, he said.

They intend to finish planning the project before March 31, in time to begin a phased roll-out on April 1, Marra said.

Announcement follows closure of consumption and treatment services

That roll-out would begin with creating the pathway for people to access services using what Marra described as a "hub and spoke" model. 

The announcement of the new hubs follows a decision by the province in August of last year to close down consumption and treatment services, sometimes known as supervised consumption sites, operating within 200 metres of schools and licensed child-care centres.

That move spelled the end of Windsor's SafePoint, which had previously closed in January of 2024.

The Windsor-Essex County Health Unit (WECHU) had opened SafePoint at Goyeau and Wyandotte Street East in April 2023 after it got federal approval to operate as an urgent public health needs site. 

The health unit had decided to temporarily fund it until it could get provincial approval. 

But its application became stalled when the government undertook an Ontario-wide review of all sites following a shooting near a CTS site in Toronto in August 2023.

The decision to ban sites within 200 metres of schools and childcare centres prevented SafePoint from ever reopening at its prior location, and the health unit ended its tenancy of the building late last year.

The Canadian Mental Health Association Lambton Kent Sarnia will also receive a HART Hub, according to the province.