What can Halifax learn from other Canadian cities with sobering centres?
CBC
As Halifax scraps plans for a sobering centre, staff at similar facilities across Canada say they’re a crucial part of the continuum of care needed to address homelessness and addiction.
After a years-long search, Halifax municipal staff failed to find a landlord for a 10-bed safe facility for people intoxicated by drugs or alcohol that would offer an alternative to a police cell.
“We really did exhaust all efforts. The search went on over an extended period of time,” said Rachel Boehm, executive director of community safety for Halifax Regional Municipality.
A major reason the municipality was unable to find a space for the sobering centre was the perception by landlords this type of service would negatively affect the neighbourhood it operated in despite there being no proof to suggest that’s true, Boehm said.
“That's just a reality. There's still a lot of stigma around substance use and mental illness,” she said.
Boehm said the need for addiction and mental health services has changed since Halifax approved plans for a sobering centre in 2022.
The number of people taken to jail cells for public intoxication is decreasing, she said, but data from Halifax Regional Police shows more than 750 people were still put in the so-called “drunk tank” last year.
There are more than a dozen sobering centres across Canada and some of them have been operating for decades.
The Morningstar Centre in Kenora, Ont., opened in 1976 and management says owning their building has allowed them to adapt to the evolving needs in their community over the years.
“We have made lots of structural changes based on our needs, so it's been easy for us to accommodate some of those changes and to, kind of, change the space based on the programs that we're offering,” said Denise Forsyth, director of mental health and addictions at the Lake of the Woods District Hospital, which operates Morningstar Centre.
The facility offers a wide range of services and partners with 15 agencies in the area to connect people to the housing, mental health and addiction support.
Alpha House in Calgary has been operating since 1981 and offers 24/7 emergency shelter, housing programs, mobile outreach and a sobering centre for people living with addiction.
The building it operates in is owned by the Alberta government. “Ultimately for us, we don't have to worry so much about our sort of place in the community,” said Shaundra Bruvall, program director. Bruvall says Alpha House diverts 8,000 to 9,000 calls from police every month.
In Halifax, Broehm said there wasn’t any capacity for a sobering centre in buildings owned by the municipality or province.
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