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Clients of Yukon’s only safe consumption site say it’s essential that the facility returns to being open seven days per week, in order to help save lives.
But the Blood Ties Four Directions Centre in downtown Whitehorse says it needs more government funding in order to safely do that, with the money needed for extra staffing following a security incident at the facility last spring.
The non-profit is usually open seven days a week, but has recently been closing on weekends. The facility sometimes sees more than 200 visits a day.
In April, RCMP arrested two women and recovered a replica firearm after an incident at the Blood Ties building. The incident forced the evacuation of the building as well as homes and businesses within a two-block radius around it. Police used an explosive to enter the building and arrest the two women.
The territorial government says it has already transferred an additional payment of $93,139 for security enhancements at Blood Ties, and a trial for increased staffing. That’s in addition to the $1,243,638 budgeted to manage the supervised consumption site between 2025-2026.
But Blood Ties executive director Jill Aalhus says much of that funding was spent fixing damage to the building after the incident last spring.
“It caused pretty significant damage,” she said. “The building couldn’t be secured, so we hired a security company to monitor the building for a couple of weeks. It was also used for security costs, like getting more cameras on the property.”
Chronic staffing shortages
Aalhus says the one-time additional payment didn’t address the fact that the wages the shelter is able to offer under the current funding structure are not competitive locally or nationally, and have led to ongoing issues around recruitment and retention.
“$1.2 million sounds like a lot, but that covers a portion of wages for 33 staff,” she said.
Aalhus said supervised consumption sites require highly-skilled workers who are prepared to deal with complex and traumatic situations on a daily basis.
The non-profit has submitted a proposal for an additional $130,000 to cover the staffing requirements to open safely over the weekends. This would be used, Aalhus says, to pay acting supervisors appropriately among other costs.
Nigel Allan, a spokesperson for Yukon’s Department of Health and Social Services, wrote in an email that the recent funding proposal from Blood Ties is “under consideration.”
“However, any budget decisions must be considered as part of the regular budget cycle,” he wrote.
With a territorial election imminent, a fall legislative sitting — and a budget discussion — isn’t immediately guaranteed.
If an election is called before a new funding agreement is in place, Aalhus says, “that’s many more months that we could have people dying alone on weekends.”
Until the recent closures, the non-profit offered free lunches and dinners seven days a week, as well as drop-in snacks and coffee, movie afternoons and educational programming. While the supervised consumption site opened in 2021, the organization, formerly known as AIDS Yukon Alliance, dates back to 1993.
“It’s somewhere we can gather and be together with all our grieving and loss,” said Megan Bailey, a Blood Ties client. “A place that keeps us connected. For people who are homeless and have no place to stay, it’s a lifeline.”
Bailey says she often goes there for meals and to keep warm in the winter.
And for many clients, the most critical service is overdose prevention.
Weekends a key time to offer service, clients say
“It can be a life-or-death issue, because some people don’t have anyone else they can count on to be there for them,” said Marge Profeit, who has visited Blood Ties for decades.
“I really hope the government understands that those two days are important. There are very few places open on the weekend and that’s a key, key place.”
The Yukon has one of the highest toxic drug death rates in the country. Last fall, four people died over an 11-day period in Whitehorse.
The Yukon government first declared a substance use health emergency in the territory in 2022, along with a number of Yukon First Nations.
Outside the Whitehorse Emergency Shelter downtown, when people are asked about Blood Ties, their eyes light up.
“They saved my life,” said one woman, who spoke to CBC News on the condition of anonymity.
The woman said at other facilities in town, including the emergency shelter, she’s found that staff aren’t always properly trained to deal with crisis situations and “freeze” upon seeing an overdose.
“All it takes is one time, using alone,” she said. “Weekends are when people get money, time off, they want to go out, maybe they’re not with their kids that weekend.”
She said if Blood Ties is closed on weekends, “you’re taking away the whole point of having a safe consumption site.”
When Blood Ties extended its hours from five days per week to seven in January 2024, visit numbers more than tripled – from 900 a month to 3,000.
“We really did see how important weekends were,” Aalhus said. “And of course, overdoses happen all seven days of the week. Every day that that site is closed really weighs heavily on us because these are people that we care about.
“These are preventable deaths. And the Yukon has had far too many.”
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