In hopes of addressing this, work has started on a mental health strategy for the community.
The new community engagement team, “really is a model of coordination of services and relief for the community in terms of making the calls and ensuring that the gaps in the community for response … are addressed, frankly,” said Rideau-Vanier Coun.
What would the team actually look like? City staff who are visible in the community, Fleury explained, connecting with businesses and residents.
Meanwhile, Ottawa Markets is doing its own planning to address one of the challenges it sees – the morning-after disarray from ByWard Market nightlife – in the form of an employment program offering a few hours of work cleaning up and resetting the area for low-income residents served by local organizations.
These include improperly discarded drug supplies, public drug use and bathroom behaviours.
Longer-term solutions also include, in her eyes, stopping the concentration of social services in the ward, as well as a safe-supply drug policy approach and significant affordable housing investment.
As for the broader ByWard Market and Lowertown mental health strategy, it’s a model the city is working on with Ottawa Inner City Health, public health, the police service, social service providers, businesses and resident representatives, said Gibbons, which will be piloted in the area.
Lowertown Community Resource Centre executive director Matthew Beutel sees potential for the mental health strategy to be beneficial.
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