Beltline residents raise ‘disorder’ concerns over Calgary supervised consumption site
Global News
The Calgary supervised consumption site at Sheldon Chumir Health Centre opened in October 2017 and had 277,021 visits as of June 30.
Some who live in the community around Calgary’s supervised consumption site are raising concerns over incidents on their properties and a lack of response to their anxieties.
Jeff Cotton, who lives in a townhouse complex a block from the supervised consumption site at the Sheldon Chumir Health Centre, said he’s had to call 911 and the non-emergency line almost weekly.
“A lot of extra criminal activity and drug dealers hovering about,” he told Global News. “Every summer it gets worse and worse. We are constantly dealing with crime and disorder.”
Cotton is the president of the homeowners association at the complex, and said residents face issues like drug use, overdoses and break-in attempts, and receive a limited response from police or other orders of government.
“We want to see it gone because anything that we’ve tried to attempt by being a good neighbour and working with it has come to no resolution that’s amicable for anybody,” Cotton said. “We cannot co-exist in this environment.”
The supervised consumption site at the Sheldon Chumir opened in October 2017 and had 277,021 visits as of June 30, 2023.
During that same time period, staff at the site responded to a total of 6,314 overdoses.
In June, the most recent month for reported statistics at the site, there were 2,774 visits from 526 unique individuals with an average of 92 visits per day.