Court challenge launched against planned HART Hub in Hamilton neighbourhood

This year is beginning with a whole new court challenge to one of Ontario Premier Doug Ford’s plans to treat people with substance abuse issues.

A group of Hamilton residents are going to court to block the plan for one of the province’s so-called HART Hub treatment centres in their neighbourhood.

People living around Aberdeen Avenue in Hamilton say a HART Hub doesn’t belong in their neighbourhood — and they say the city’s own bylaws prevent the HART Hub that’s being planned.

The home in question is supposed to house 18 beds in a new HART Hub – which stands for Homeless and Addiction Recovery Treatment. The government plan is for HART Hubs around the province to treat people struggling with addiction without the supervised drug use of the past.

A group of residents has filed a court application for a ruling that the HART Hub would actually be a medical clinic — which is not allowed under the city zoning bylaw for Aberdeen.

“The particular zoning that this property sits within is a low density residential zoning, and that type of zoning doesn’t permit a medical clinic,” said Eric Gillespie, lawyer for residents in the area.

They say a judge could tell Hamilton and Urban Core Community Health to look somewhere else.

“To effectively say, please don’t proceed at this location unless you go through a proper rezoning process,” said Gillespie.

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Even if the city lost in court but rezoned the area, the residents say they’d welcome that chance to get things out in the open.

“What that would do is it would open the door to a much more transparent and open consultation type of process. And I think that’s one of the key concerns with the HART Hub concept — was it’s just being imposed on each of the communities,” said Gillespie.

Throughout the proposals for this HART Hub, residents have been arguing that they haven’t been told what’s going on.

Hamilton Centre MPP Robin Lennox says people have been left out of the government’s HART Hub process across the province.

“That decision was made without any consults locally, without any consults of provincial experts working in this field and without any consultation from Hamiltonians in terms of what services we need and where we need them. And so I don’t think it’s a surprise that people in the community are feeling like they haven’t had an opportunity to have input into these services because no one across the province has,” said Lennox.

She says the HART Hubs were supposed to be in operation last April after supervised consumption sites were closed, but the plan hasn’t gone well.

Lennox says the NDP hasn’t been able to get any answers on how many of the 28 planned hubs are operating, or what’s happening with the $550 million set aside for the program.

“They were supposed to be operational on April 1, and so this is many, many months behind,” said Lennox

Lennox adds that many people who were counting on the HART Hubs for treatment are no better off now than they were a year ago.

The City of Hamilton says it’s reviewing the court documents from the Aberdeen residents but would have to see a formal zoning submission to determine if the Hart Hub conforms to the area’s planning.

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