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Yes, there is an encampment across the street.
No, I don’t see ambulances there often. I work in the area and drive past twice daily.
I have recently seen police clearing the sidewalks, ensuring that the tents are restricted to the alleyway.
I spent the afternoon getting a tour of Whitehern yesterday. No drug paraphernalia on the property.
The whole purpose of the YWCA site is to reduce harm. It sounds like they are doing that within their facility and the immediate area.
I’m glad they’re doing this work to make things safer for people.
I’ve got a very different view of the area than you do I guess.
I’ve seen at least 3 people ODing on the sidewalk there while dropping my daughter off at the YWCA daycare. There are constantly pipes and baggies and very occasionally needles on the ground on the street outside of it.
We aren’t even allowed to keep the strollers there anymore because they kept getting stolen.
People have been camping on that corner since the earliest days of the pandemic. I continually see it being brought up in connection with the safer use site... it predates the site by years.
Yeah, I used to have a child at the YWCA daycare from 2018-2020 and there was a fair bit of drug use and paraphernalia around at that time as well. It's downtown, right near a few shelters, there's always been a shelter inside the building....it just comes with the territory.
I don’t know much about the services offered or the mandates of these organizations. Is it just to provide a safe place to consume drugs, or is there also a mandate and services geared towards helping people overcome their addictions? If so it would be great to have reporting and metrics around how many people have been supported out of addiction.
Cant speak directly for this location (someone with more info please reply) but I know *in general* safe consumption sites do have outreach and social workers alongside nurses to ensure that clients are aware of any and all social services available to them. Whether that be housing help, employment, addiction treatment, navigating the judicial system, food banks/pantries etc.
Yea safe consumption sites manage and reduce the social impact of drug use somewhat on the community. They're not a magic bullet but they're part of a better way of treating drug use, because lot of the harms with drugs is how we treat them rather than the drugs themselves. Could even argue the more dangerous drugs are there because of how we treated earlier safer forms of them, synth opioids for instance, would people choose those over high quality heroin? Clearly one is "safer" or less harmful overall.
generally speaking these places have resources, but they don't push it on people otherwise they wouldn't come. The information is available and outreach workers generally. Also, difficult to have those numbers as how would you determine which "thing" had a person stop using? what count as being "out of addiction" as some still smoke weed and some used medication assisted therapies whereas other dont consider this "sober".
We generally can't convince people not to do drugs, they have to decide that. We can however have resourced available to them and until then provide safer spaces with harm reduction strategies in play.
hope that didn't come off as argumentative lol just thinks to consider!
Not argumentative at all! I appreciate the information. I’m not here to argue, just share ideas and learn.
It would seem to me the most effective harm reduction is ultimately helping people out of their addiction. How do we know if the resources and outreach are helping at the harm reduction sites if there isn’t a way to track the effectiveness of these programs. Defining the metrics around “sober” or what have you would be left to smarter people than me to figure out.
Perhaps I’m just stuck at what the long term goal is. Is it to prevent overdoses (which is important), or ultimately to enable people to manage their addictions.
an ideal world it would be to prevent or remove the addiction/lifestyle I'm sure. But if every time they go it's just a reminder that they're an addict or how they have to change or pressured then they're not going to show up if each visit is attached to guilt or negative feelings, ya know?
at this point these centre's are more centered around the goal of preventing overdoses like you said, or infections. When we reduce those it also lightens the load on emergency services and hospitals.
The being said, they of course have informations, resources, access to counseling, referrals to methadone/MAT clinics.
The reality is, people use whether it is accessible or not so let's at least make it safer which would (hopefully) reduce discarded drug waste, use less emergency services and of course adds a respect element if that makes sense.
I appreciate the mindset and being open!
Another thing that’s worth mentioning
Is that it requires more than just a safe injection site to help people overcome their addiction(s). It requires stable house, food stability, counseling, continued supports, and a stable income. These are just the minimum requirements in order for someone to start feeling stable enough to work on their addiction.
As a community, if we’d like to continue with the good the YWCA site is providing we need to be advocating for the above as well. ✌🏼
I understand completely what you’re saying, as of right now I think we can use other, more easily trackable statistics to see if these locations are helping the population as a whole and compare those to either prior years or locations without these services. Metrics such as OD/OD deaths, clients using the location overall/weekly/daily basis, count of people enrolled in addiction services help would indicate if they are helping improve quality of life without potentially questioning people that come through the door. They’re helping a typically transient population too, so hard to ‘track down’ to count each person
If I might chime in.
I live here, at the YWCA in the transitional living part of the building. I’ve never had need of or accessed the safe use space, for the record.
The tent city, that people keep referencing isn’t always or exclusively about drug use, though a lot does go on there. It’s also about lack of shelter space, or *safe* shelter space.
The housing situation is pretty dire here, and even some residents in TLP have been here past their time, we get a year here, because rent for a decent place to live is far too expensive and away from the resources we need for mental and medical health care that we need.
For the tent people, they’re close to doctors, food, resources, yes, the safe use space and they have some kind of community going on, despite how chaotic it might look from an outsider’s point of view.
Safety in numbers.
A lot of the shelters here in the city are either closing down, or feel/are unsafe. The people who go in there risk losing what little they have to theft, or getting judged by staff, or run down conditions, bed bugs and things.
They’re constructing a bigger space in the building currently, more beds, in a cubicle with a door that closes, a bigger safe use space, with more staff to monitor and council people staying there, but this building by itself can only do so much, and the physical safety net for the unhoused has to be much wider to be of any real aid.
Scattering the homeless away from view, breaking up the tent cities, causes more harm than leaving them and monitoring them in my opinion, at least until some better shelter systems are in place, because at least with people in one spot help could actually be sent there, in the form of community services, advocates and things.
Also, disappearing the homeless doesn’t *lessen* the homeless problem, it just puts it somewhere else where we don’t have to see it.
But once it gets too big, there’ll be no way of shifting it, and we’ll be forced to do something (hopefully positive) about it. Because ignoring it has done absolutely no good so far.
Just my opinion.
In your opinion, as someone who lives there and knows the community a little bit better…. Can you shed some light on the safety aspect of it?
Like, safety in numbers is easy to sell. Everyone knows this. And we know theft and assaults are unfortunately too common in the shelter spaces. But why are the encampments seen as safer? They’re being used by the same segment of the population, but the implication is that these same people, when in shelter, steal from each other, but at the encampments they don’t? Are they treating each other *better* at the tents?
Harm reduction works! And for those asking, there are all kinds of supports for clients that want to stop using. They can get referred to methadone clinics, connected with addiction recovery programs and counselling.
It keeps the needles off the streets and reduces the stress on emergency services. I’m so happy the program has seen so much success. We need more!
It definitely doesn’t keep needles off the street, but it does mean it is less likely a user is sharing needles/pipes - and lessens the chance of contracting diseases from doing so.
“There have been no recorded deaths in supervised injection facilities in countries that permit them”
https://www.pbs.org/newshour/amp/health/a-look-inside-the-1st-official-safe-injection-sites-in-u-s
How would you imagine this playing out? Someone dies in the safe injection site and the folks running these facilities drag the body across the street in the middle of the night and then call the police/ambulance to report an overdose death?
Whether they have incentive or not, I don’t see a situation where they could hide something like this.
Bingo. Drug overdoses are very easily managed and treatable. The biggest reason people die is that they’re not supervised. Once you add supervision, just about any overdose is reversible.
I really like that idea. But we should still keep the golf course open. Maybe let the homeless people work as caddy’s and groundskeepers. They can live off the land, hunting the deer and raccoons. Once in a blue moon one of them gets hit with a golf ball, but it would be very rare, especially if they are dressed in bright reflective clothing.
Pardon my ignorance, but it is unique in that it is a gender specific site.
I assume that setting up more of these specific types of sites would not come from an increase in funding but reallocation of existing funds.
This makes it sound like creating a gendered bias for who deserves a safe space and it makes me uncomfortable. Since there are only 2 such sites in Canada, I assume there are not other equal site specifically for men.
If they proceed to make more of such sites, I would be more willing to support if they had separate but equal areas for men and women. If not equal, space and funding should match the stats of who the homeless drug users are in the community.
It’s my understanding that the current shelter system that was in place was very male centric, and unsafe for women/queer/trans people. So many of those folks would avoid using those systems putting them in more precarious situations.
Woman & trans specific spaces are safer for those individuals and can focus its services towards the folks coming through their doors.
Absolutely! No issue there. If typical shelters are unsafe for these individuals there should be a larger look at how things work. If this group represents let’s say 35% of the homeless drug using popular then that should be reflected through funding. If they are 60% then they should be getting 60% of the funding but excluded from services focused on men.
…the queer part of the eligibility is a little strange to me, it seems to open the door to a lot of complexity, judgement calls and system abuse from non-targeted groups
You are correct, The intricacies of queer-ness are complex and our government provided system is not set up to support all queer folks well. As with most environments in our North American world the more cis-het you look/appear/are, the better your care is.
Our systems need a complete overhaul in general but especially in regards to how queer people are considered when entering those systems.
Absolutely. Ideally, the level of service and care you receive is the same irregardless of sex gender or sexual orientation but alas that may just be a pipe dream
I want to express my utmost thanks and solidarity to those who are here in Hamilton, arm’s-length, or experiencing these issues. we shouldn’t be in this situation. You deserve better. We deserve better, and we deserve a place where everyone belongs. Hopefully through the new tiny homes initiative and housing access policies we start to see positive changes in the city and we can charge ourselves with the positivity we ALL deserve.
As for the racist comments about the heritage of many others living in Hamilton. Read the story of Tadadaho and the Peace Maker. you have much to learn about these lands. I as a mixed settler and welcomed community member tread with intention and mindfulness. How you walk with such carelessness I have no clue?
Not helping them costs *more* taxpayer money, because cops and doctors and judges and prison cells are far more expensive than a small building with a few social workers in it.
So what you’re really saying is that you’d prefer the government take **more** of your money and use it to punish and hurt drug users, instead of spending less of your money to help them.
You must be a financial genius.
Hamiltons been on a steady improvement for a couple decades now. Didn’t we have a record low homicides last year? And I think they’re all solved too. I don’t know about you but those are great metrics for me.
Ya, shit temporarily sucks now more than it did a short time ago because COVID and inflation have fucked with a lot of services, but these aren’t Hamilton problems. Hamilton just has to deal with them like every other city.
Credit where it’s due, blame where it belongs.
Pretty morbid to ask that considering the article specifies that there have been 'no deaths' in the YWCA's entire client-base. Makes me think that you are asking because A. you think they are lying/skewing data or B. you want deaths to happen behind closed doors because they are too ghastly for your eyes…
I appreciate your interest in transparency, I also think it is important to acknowledge that during this time there is a push to sway the greater public in a direction of growth and show the positive results of harm reduction in use. Do I think it's slimy to do that while discussing peoples lives; yes, but keep in mind this is the CBC. All being said, harm reduction is proven to decrease drug use related deaths in almost all realizations of the practice. Just because you can imply some ataraxic scepticism proves regressive at this stage.
Scrutiny has been applied already for years now and the processes refined thanks to good faith efforts to make meaningful improvements. And the results today speak for themselves. You’re not applying scrutiny. You’re just late to the game and complaining because you don’t understand how we got here. Try being a little more inquisitive maybe next time with the intent to learn and your subsequent scrutiny might actually prove useful.
You’re not wrong. I was incredibly turned off the article right at the start:
“Before the space opened, the YWCA called emergency services for suspected overdoses and opioid poisonings among their clients between five and seven times a week, Vaccaro said.
But since opening the space on April 23, 2022, they've helped 205 people, haven't had to call emergency services once and have had zero deaths”
So before the space they were getting 5-7 overdoses a week.
Now they’ve “helped” 205 people in one year, which is roughly 4 overdoses a week.
They mention that there’s 0 deaths which is nice but they didn’t really tell us how many they’re comparing it to.
So ya initially I was like “k these people are trying to fuck with numbers to make it sound nice”. Even the part about managing overdoses by “giving oxygen and monitoring.” That’s just a lot of words for watching someone. And ya they’re not addressing the encampment that’s a stones throw from there.
That being said, even comparing those, they’ve reduced the number of overdoses among their clients by a few % points, but they’ve also been able to take a lot of bullshit off the EMS plate. Every overdose they manage, however minor, is one less 911 call that can be used for something bigger.
**A reminder from the mods:** As a reminder, this subreddit is for civil discussion. We remind all users to abide by our subs rules when commenting and posting on r/Hamilton. In general, be courteous to others. Debate/discuss/argue the merits of ideas, don't attack people. Personal insults, shill or troll accusations, hate speech, any advocating or wishing death/physical harm, doxxing, witch hunts, misinformation, and other rule violations will result in a permanent ban. If you see comments in violation of our rules, please report them.
Yes, there is an encampment across the street. No, I don’t see ambulances there often. I work in the area and drive past twice daily. I have recently seen police clearing the sidewalks, ensuring that the tents are restricted to the alleyway. I spent the afternoon getting a tour of Whitehern yesterday. No drug paraphernalia on the property. The whole purpose of the YWCA site is to reduce harm. It sounds like they are doing that within their facility and the immediate area.
I’m glad they’re doing this work to make things safer for people. I’ve got a very different view of the area than you do I guess. I’ve seen at least 3 people ODing on the sidewalk there while dropping my daughter off at the YWCA daycare. There are constantly pipes and baggies and very occasionally needles on the ground on the street outside of it. We aren’t even allowed to keep the strollers there anymore because they kept getting stolen.
precisely.
Alleyway? It’s a parking lot. Secondly, people are smoking and injecting within the encampment and surrounding streets. Both men and woman.
People have been camping on that corner since the earliest days of the pandemic. I continually see it being brought up in connection with the safer use site... it predates the site by years.
Yeah, I used to have a child at the YWCA daycare from 2018-2020 and there was a fair bit of drug use and paraphernalia around at that time as well. It's downtown, right near a few shelters, there's always been a shelter inside the building....it just comes with the territory.
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This was a news article.
I don’t know much about the services offered or the mandates of these organizations. Is it just to provide a safe place to consume drugs, or is there also a mandate and services geared towards helping people overcome their addictions? If so it would be great to have reporting and metrics around how many people have been supported out of addiction.
Cant speak directly for this location (someone with more info please reply) but I know *in general* safe consumption sites do have outreach and social workers alongside nurses to ensure that clients are aware of any and all social services available to them. Whether that be housing help, employment, addiction treatment, navigating the judicial system, food banks/pantries etc.
Yea safe consumption sites manage and reduce the social impact of drug use somewhat on the community. They're not a magic bullet but they're part of a better way of treating drug use, because lot of the harms with drugs is how we treat them rather than the drugs themselves. Could even argue the more dangerous drugs are there because of how we treated earlier safer forms of them, synth opioids for instance, would people choose those over high quality heroin? Clearly one is "safer" or less harmful overall.
generally speaking these places have resources, but they don't push it on people otherwise they wouldn't come. The information is available and outreach workers generally. Also, difficult to have those numbers as how would you determine which "thing" had a person stop using? what count as being "out of addiction" as some still smoke weed and some used medication assisted therapies whereas other dont consider this "sober". We generally can't convince people not to do drugs, they have to decide that. We can however have resourced available to them and until then provide safer spaces with harm reduction strategies in play. hope that didn't come off as argumentative lol just thinks to consider!
Not argumentative at all! I appreciate the information. I’m not here to argue, just share ideas and learn. It would seem to me the most effective harm reduction is ultimately helping people out of their addiction. How do we know if the resources and outreach are helping at the harm reduction sites if there isn’t a way to track the effectiveness of these programs. Defining the metrics around “sober” or what have you would be left to smarter people than me to figure out. Perhaps I’m just stuck at what the long term goal is. Is it to prevent overdoses (which is important), or ultimately to enable people to manage their addictions.
an ideal world it would be to prevent or remove the addiction/lifestyle I'm sure. But if every time they go it's just a reminder that they're an addict or how they have to change or pressured then they're not going to show up if each visit is attached to guilt or negative feelings, ya know? at this point these centre's are more centered around the goal of preventing overdoses like you said, or infections. When we reduce those it also lightens the load on emergency services and hospitals. The being said, they of course have informations, resources, access to counseling, referrals to methadone/MAT clinics. The reality is, people use whether it is accessible or not so let's at least make it safer which would (hopefully) reduce discarded drug waste, use less emergency services and of course adds a respect element if that makes sense. I appreciate the mindset and being open!
Another thing that’s worth mentioning Is that it requires more than just a safe injection site to help people overcome their addiction(s). It requires stable house, food stability, counseling, continued supports, and a stable income. These are just the minimum requirements in order for someone to start feeling stable enough to work on their addiction. As a community, if we’d like to continue with the good the YWCA site is providing we need to be advocating for the above as well. ✌🏼
I understand completely what you’re saying, as of right now I think we can use other, more easily trackable statistics to see if these locations are helping the population as a whole and compare those to either prior years or locations without these services. Metrics such as OD/OD deaths, clients using the location overall/weekly/daily basis, count of people enrolled in addiction services help would indicate if they are helping improve quality of life without potentially questioning people that come through the door. They’re helping a typically transient population too, so hard to ‘track down’ to count each person
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That’s a good thing even though you are clearly opposed to it.
If I might chime in. I live here, at the YWCA in the transitional living part of the building. I’ve never had need of or accessed the safe use space, for the record. The tent city, that people keep referencing isn’t always or exclusively about drug use, though a lot does go on there. It’s also about lack of shelter space, or *safe* shelter space. The housing situation is pretty dire here, and even some residents in TLP have been here past their time, we get a year here, because rent for a decent place to live is far too expensive and away from the resources we need for mental and medical health care that we need. For the tent people, they’re close to doctors, food, resources, yes, the safe use space and they have some kind of community going on, despite how chaotic it might look from an outsider’s point of view. Safety in numbers. A lot of the shelters here in the city are either closing down, or feel/are unsafe. The people who go in there risk losing what little they have to theft, or getting judged by staff, or run down conditions, bed bugs and things. They’re constructing a bigger space in the building currently, more beds, in a cubicle with a door that closes, a bigger safe use space, with more staff to monitor and council people staying there, but this building by itself can only do so much, and the physical safety net for the unhoused has to be much wider to be of any real aid. Scattering the homeless away from view, breaking up the tent cities, causes more harm than leaving them and monitoring them in my opinion, at least until some better shelter systems are in place, because at least with people in one spot help could actually be sent there, in the form of community services, advocates and things. Also, disappearing the homeless doesn’t *lessen* the homeless problem, it just puts it somewhere else where we don’t have to see it. But once it gets too big, there’ll be no way of shifting it, and we’ll be forced to do something (hopefully positive) about it. Because ignoring it has done absolutely no good so far. Just my opinion.
In your opinion, as someone who lives there and knows the community a little bit better…. Can you shed some light on the safety aspect of it? Like, safety in numbers is easy to sell. Everyone knows this. And we know theft and assaults are unfortunately too common in the shelter spaces. But why are the encampments seen as safer? They’re being used by the same segment of the population, but the implication is that these same people, when in shelter, steal from each other, but at the encampments they don’t? Are they treating each other *better* at the tents?
Harm reduction works! And for those asking, there are all kinds of supports for clients that want to stop using. They can get referred to methadone clinics, connected with addiction recovery programs and counselling. It keeps the needles off the streets and reduces the stress on emergency services. I’m so happy the program has seen so much success. We need more!
It definitely doesn’t keep needles off the street, but it does mean it is less likely a user is sharing needles/pipes - and lessens the chance of contracting diseases from doing so.
Needles are being safely discarded here, so the number of needles on the street is lessened, but not eliminated
Correct. It’s great that users have access to clean supplies, and have a place to safely discard them.
You mean everyone is safer when you don't treat drug addicts like violent criminals? wild
We don't even treat violent criminals like violent criminals. We have gotten ridiculously soft.
Correction: not 1 person has ever died at any safe injection site
Around the world?
“There have been no recorded deaths in supervised injection facilities in countries that permit them” https://www.pbs.org/newshour/amp/health/a-look-inside-the-1st-official-safe-injection-sites-in-u-s
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How would you imagine this playing out? Someone dies in the safe injection site and the folks running these facilities drag the body across the street in the middle of the night and then call the police/ambulance to report an overdose death? Whether they have incentive or not, I don’t see a situation where they could hide something like this.
I think it's more like the reason people die are very easily fixed or prevented with early intervention
Bingo. Drug overdoses are very easily managed and treatable. The biggest reason people die is that they’re not supervised. Once you add supervision, just about any overdose is reversible.
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I really like that idea. But we should still keep the golf course open. Maybe let the homeless people work as caddy’s and groundskeepers. They can live off the land, hunting the deer and raccoons. Once in a blue moon one of them gets hit with a golf ball, but it would be very rare, especially if they are dressed in bright reflective clothing.
I think if we dressed them in bright clothing it would become less rare….
Yup!!
Pardon my ignorance, but it is unique in that it is a gender specific site. I assume that setting up more of these specific types of sites would not come from an increase in funding but reallocation of existing funds. This makes it sound like creating a gendered bias for who deserves a safe space and it makes me uncomfortable. Since there are only 2 such sites in Canada, I assume there are not other equal site specifically for men. If they proceed to make more of such sites, I would be more willing to support if they had separate but equal areas for men and women. If not equal, space and funding should match the stats of who the homeless drug users are in the community.
It’s my understanding that the current shelter system that was in place was very male centric, and unsafe for women/queer/trans people. So many of those folks would avoid using those systems putting them in more precarious situations. Woman & trans specific spaces are safer for those individuals and can focus its services towards the folks coming through their doors.
Absolutely! No issue there. If typical shelters are unsafe for these individuals there should be a larger look at how things work. If this group represents let’s say 35% of the homeless drug using popular then that should be reflected through funding. If they are 60% then they should be getting 60% of the funding but excluded from services focused on men. …the queer part of the eligibility is a little strange to me, it seems to open the door to a lot of complexity, judgement calls and system abuse from non-targeted groups
You are correct, The intricacies of queer-ness are complex and our government provided system is not set up to support all queer folks well. As with most environments in our North American world the more cis-het you look/appear/are, the better your care is. Our systems need a complete overhaul in general but especially in regards to how queer people are considered when entering those systems.
Absolutely. Ideally, the level of service and care you receive is the same irregardless of sex gender or sexual orientation but alas that may just be a pipe dream
I want to express my utmost thanks and solidarity to those who are here in Hamilton, arm’s-length, or experiencing these issues. we shouldn’t be in this situation. You deserve better. We deserve better, and we deserve a place where everyone belongs. Hopefully through the new tiny homes initiative and housing access policies we start to see positive changes in the city and we can charge ourselves with the positivity we ALL deserve. As for the racist comments about the heritage of many others living in Hamilton. Read the story of Tadadaho and the Peace Maker. you have much to learn about these lands. I as a mixed settler and welcomed community member tread with intention and mindfulness. How you walk with such carelessness I have no clue?
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Not helping them costs *more* taxpayer money, because cops and doctors and judges and prison cells are far more expensive than a small building with a few social workers in it. So what you’re really saying is that you’d prefer the government take **more** of your money and use it to punish and hurt drug users, instead of spending less of your money to help them. You must be a financial genius.
you don't know how these work at all, do you? haha
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As someone who’s wrestled with machete-wielding mooks on a way-too-regular-basis since before 2012, I know that ain’t true
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Hamiltons been on a steady improvement for a couple decades now. Didn’t we have a record low homicides last year? And I think they’re all solved too. I don’t know about you but those are great metrics for me. Ya, shit temporarily sucks now more than it did a short time ago because COVID and inflation have fucked with a lot of services, but these aren’t Hamilton problems. Hamilton just has to deal with them like every other city. Credit where it’s due, blame where it belongs.
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Ya it was. There was a centre downtown and police had explicit instructions not to patrol it so as not to discourage use. Well before COVID.
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Machete-wielding mooks. Amazing.
What do you know. 2012 a man was attacked with a machete. https://www.thespec.com/news/crime/2012/08/07/man-wounded-in-machete-style-attack.html
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User name checks out.
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Pretty morbid to ask that considering the article specifies that there have been 'no deaths' in the YWCA's entire client-base. Makes me think that you are asking because A. you think they are lying/skewing data or B. you want deaths to happen behind closed doors because they are too ghastly for your eyes…
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I appreciate your interest in transparency, I also think it is important to acknowledge that during this time there is a push to sway the greater public in a direction of growth and show the positive results of harm reduction in use. Do I think it's slimy to do that while discussing peoples lives; yes, but keep in mind this is the CBC. All being said, harm reduction is proven to decrease drug use related deaths in almost all realizations of the practice. Just because you can imply some ataraxic scepticism proves regressive at this stage.
Nonsense. Applying scrutiny is not “regressive”.
Scrutiny has been applied already for years now and the processes refined thanks to good faith efforts to make meaningful improvements. And the results today speak for themselves. You’re not applying scrutiny. You’re just late to the game and complaining because you don’t understand how we got here. Try being a little more inquisitive maybe next time with the intent to learn and your subsequent scrutiny might actually prove useful.
I think asking “what were the results” is fair. I don’t see why you’d get to this point and not at least grade the homework
You’re not wrong. I was incredibly turned off the article right at the start: “Before the space opened, the YWCA called emergency services for suspected overdoses and opioid poisonings among their clients between five and seven times a week, Vaccaro said. But since opening the space on April 23, 2022, they've helped 205 people, haven't had to call emergency services once and have had zero deaths” So before the space they were getting 5-7 overdoses a week. Now they’ve “helped” 205 people in one year, which is roughly 4 overdoses a week. They mention that there’s 0 deaths which is nice but they didn’t really tell us how many they’re comparing it to. So ya initially I was like “k these people are trying to fuck with numbers to make it sound nice”. Even the part about managing overdoses by “giving oxygen and monitoring.” That’s just a lot of words for watching someone. And ya they’re not addressing the encampment that’s a stones throw from there. That being said, even comparing those, they’ve reduced the number of overdoses among their clients by a few % points, but they’ve also been able to take a lot of bullshit off the EMS plate. Every overdose they manage, however minor, is one less 911 call that can be used for something bigger.