Transitional housing facility in Happy Valley-Goose Bay will be built next year: MHA

A proposed transitional housing facility that has been a point of contention among residents of Happy Valley-Goose Bay is going ahead, according to the MHA for the region.

Perry Trimper, who represents Lake Melville, told The Independent the brakes had been put on the facility until a recently released report on policing in the area was completed. 

“We will be moving ahead with that very soon in terms of the permit applications and other planning,” Trimper said. “We’re moving on three fronts: policing, housing, the shelter type of housing, and then the treatment and recovery.”

Trimper said he felt it was important to hold off on the next steps of the $30-million proposed facility until the other two items had moved forward, and now that the public safety report is complete, and government has committed to having a separate facility for treatment and recovery, he said the plan is to move forward on permitting and getting the facility built.

“I said, ‘Let’s wait,’ because the community has been divided,” he said. “They wanted to hear about public safety, they wanted to hear about recovery and treatment. Now that those are moving forward, we’re hoping to get the permitting and the tender moving, with the plan to have it built in 2025.”

Trimper said the facility will be a “very well designed, state of the art, national standard, integrated housing hub” offering a “whole raft of services.” 

Happy Valley-Goose Bay Mayor George Andrews said he learned about the province’s plans for a separate addictions treatment facility in his town from The Independent. “Good to know,” he said during a Nov. 14 phone interview. He said the town has had discussions with the province, and that the province indicated it would contact the town with future updates.

“But that’s good,” he said. “I’m glad.”

Housing hub needed in community

Krystal Saunders, who works for Nunatsiavut at the current, much smaller Housing Hub shelter as the facility’s housing support services manager, said she was very happy to hear the new shelter is now moving forward.

Saunders said the need for the facility is obviously there, pointing to the fact that the Labrador Inn, a local hotel, handles overflow from the shelter and is also routinely full.

“If you just stop right there and say, ‘We’ve got this many clients in the Labrador Inn that we can’t accommodate in the shelter that we have in the community,’ [it’s obvious] we need a new building,” she said. 

“The need is there, there’s nothing we can do to stop that need. Goose Bay is the hub — it’s the hospital, it’s the court, it’s the dentist, it’s the eye doctor. We’re always going to have that transient factor in our community,” she continued. “So if folks who are in need of those services end up at the Housing Hub or the new shelter, why not have a building that we can actually do the work in, that’s suitable, where we can cook a big enough meal to feed them, or have enough space to let them sleep.”

Saunders said when she and other staff travel around the province and country to conferences and tell people what they do, people are amazed they can do so much with so little. She said the new facility will be a game changer for them.

“I can’t imagine the progress that will be made when you take our staff and our clients and put them in a space where they can do everything,” she said. “Right now everything is kind of being done on the side of desks, and there’s not enough space, and it’s not safe and it’s cold in the winter.”

Recovery and treatment to be offered in separate facility

Initially, the plan was to put treatment and recovery services in the new facility, Trimper said, and develop an intake for bringing people with more serious addiction-related needs to the island. But the province decided it makes more sense to put a treatment and recovery facility in Happy Valley-Goose Bay.

“We were working so hard trying to figure out how to develop an intake system so that [clients] would be comfortable enough to come to Newfoundland,” he said. “That’s quite a step for folks that are struggling with all kinds of things, to leave their home region and just go out to completely unknown places, even [places] with good reputations. So we decided to develop that treatment and recovery centre in Labrador and make sure that after they go through these treatments, whether it be eight or 12 or more weeks, the environment they go back to—and their interaction with that environment—is supportive and does not send them back into more challenges with whatever condition or issues that they were dealing with.”

John Abbott, provincial minister of housing and mental health and addictions, said after discussions with stakeholders over the past two years it was decided that a standalone enhanced addiction treatment facility was needed. 

“We asked the Labrador Grenfell (Health) zone, working with the department of health and services, to identify what that could look like, and we have now coalesced that we need to add more detox services,” he said. “We need to have some residential treatment services, and we want to have recovery services — so we have mapped that out. We’ll be moving forward with that in the new year.”

Abbott said what the province is looking at is a scaled-out version of the Humberwood Treatment Centre in Corner Brook, and the plan is to lease space in the community for the facility. He said people can expect more information on the facility in the coming months.