The Ontario government has announced it is investing $6.2 million in a Homelessness and Addiction Recovery Treatment (HART) Hub in Peterborough, one of 27 approved across Ontario.

Peterborough-Kawartha MPP Dave Smith made the announcement on Monday (January 27) at Showplace Performance Centre in downtown Peterborough, at an event attended by Peterborough mayor Jeff Leal, Peterborough city councillors Alex Bierk and Keith Riel, Peterborough County warden Bonnie Clark, Peterborough Regional Health Centre president and CEO Dr. Lynn Mikula, Peterborough police chief Stuart Betts, Canadian Mental Health Association Haliburton, Kawartha, Pine Ridge CEO Ellen Watkins, Haliburton Kawartha Northumberland Peterborough Health Unit medical officer of health Dr. Thomas Piggott, and others.

“The Hart Hub is a fantastic approach,” MPP Smith said in a media release. “It means that we are crossing different sectors to ensure that we are providing the service where they need it, when they need it, and at the appropriate level. People can enter at any stage into the hub, wherever they are, and then progress through. It is the first time that any province has looked at the entire continuum for homelessness, addiction, and rehab.”

The creation of HART Hubs comes from the province’s August 2024 “safer communities” announcement that banned supervised drug consumption sites within 200 metres of schools and child care centres, which also resulted in the closure of nine existing provincially funded supervised drug consumption sites, including four in Toronto as well as sites in Guelph, Hamilton, Thunder Bay, Ottawa, and Kitchener-Waterloo.

During the August announcement, the Ontario government encouraged those nine sites to submit proposals to transition to HART Hubs, and also announced it would also be investing $379 million to create 18 new HART Hubs across Ontario and issued a province-wide call for proposals.

On January 5, the province announced the nine closed drug injection sites would be transitioned to HART Hubs by March 31 and, on January 27, announced the 18 new hubs — for a total of 27 HART Hubs. All the hubs will have the goal of being operational by April 1.

Led by Four Counties Addictions Services (Fourcast), Peterborough’s HART Hub will bring together local service delivery partners to provide a continuum of services in Peterborough for people with complex service needs on their recovery journey from addictions and homelessness.

The goals of the HART Hub are to increase system capacity for primary care, psychiatric care, and assessments for the homeless population that typically experience barriers to services, increase access to housing supports and income supports, and improve quality of life.

“Today’s announcement is a huge step forward in addressing homelessness and addiction recovery in our community,” said councillor Bierk, who co-chairs the city’s housing and homelessness portfolio with councillor Riel. “The HART Hub will provide much-needed supports and housing options for individuals with complex needs, helping them stabilize and rebuild their lives. We are grateful to MPP Smith for his advocacy and this critical investment in creating pathways to recovery and housing stability.”

The Peterborough HART Hub would deliver primary and psychiatric care, mental health and addictions services (including case management, Rapid Access Addiction Medicine (RAAM), withdrawal management, bed-based addictions treatment, and aftercare), peer recovery coaches, mental health and addictions supportive housing (both transitional and permanent) and dual diagnosis supportive housing with 24/7 community wrap-around services, occupational therapy, and vocational services.

“The HART Hub investments are the right concept for the right time,” said Fourcast executive director Donna Rogers. “Our community, like others, is struggling with high rates of homelessness, chronic mental illness, substance use and addictions and poverty.”

“For people living this crisis, housing is the solution. The Peterborough HART Hub investment will offer housing alongside many of the other essential supports that can help people re-establish their lives through housing stability, addiction and mental health recovery, and good health. Our community is ready to maximize this opportunity and build on the strong foundations of housing from homelessness that has been established amongst our community partners.”

Like all of the HART Hubs funded by the province, the Peterborough hub will not offer safer supply, supervised drug consumption, or needle exchange programs.

The other 17 new HART Hubs that have been approved by the province are listed below.

• CMHA Peel Dufferin (Brampton)
• Health Sciences North/ Horizon Santé Nord (Greater Sudbury)
• The HART of Simcoe (Barrie)
• Hôtel-Dieu Grace Healthcare (Windsor)
• CMHA Hastings and Prince Edward County (Belleville)
• Durham Community Health Centre (Oshawa)
• CMHA Thames Valley (London)
• CMHA Algoma (Sault Ste. Marie)
• Services and Housing in Province (Dufferin County)
• Lanark, Leeds and Grenville Addictions and Mental Health (Lanark, Leeds and Grenville)
• Oxford Ontario Health Team (Oxford County)
• County of Renfrew (Renfrew County)
• Gateway of Niagara (Niagara)
• CMHA Lambton Kent Sarnia (Sarnia)
• Pinecrest Queensway Community Health Centre (Ottawa)
• Kenora Chiefs Advisory (Kenora)
• Maamwesying (Sault Ste. Marie)

At Monday’s HART Hub announcement, MPP Smith also announced a provincial investment to expand the mental health crisis unit at Peterborough Regional Health Centre (PRHC).

The Ontario Ministry of Health is working with PRHC to complete early planning and design for the crisis response unit. Once further planning is complete and the project has been tendered and awarded, a construction schedule will be confirmed.

Once opened, the expanded mental health crisis unit will include additional capacity to address high volumes of acute mental health and substance abuse incidents and new crisis unit beds, and will separate adult and youth mental health patients tso they can receive the appropriate and high-quality care they need in a safe space.

“This moment marks the culmination of years of planning and preparation to expand our regional mental health and addictions program,” said PRHC president and CEO Dr. Lynn Mikula.
“The addition of a purpose-built, expanded crisis response unit at PRHC will have a profound impact on the lives of thousands of patients, improving care and alleviating overcrowding in our emergency department, which sees 80,000 visits a year.”

The City of Peterborough’s application for funding under the second round of the Government of Canada’s Housing Accelerator Fund (HAF) has been approved.

On Monday (January 27), the Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation (CMHC) announced Peterborough is one of 23 municipalities in Ontario that will receive a total of almost $138 million in funding under HAF, a $4.4 billion initiative announced in 2023 that will run until 2027-28.

While the CMHC media release does not indicate how much funding each municipality would receive, the City of Peterborough had applied for $10,690,354 under the $400-million second round of HAF. The city applied for the funding after a previous application for $24 million under the first round of HAF funding was rejected.

According to the release, the $138 million in HAF funding to the 23 municipalities will accelerate the construction of over 4,200 homes over the next three years.

The CMHC announcement comes the day after the Ontario government announced it is providing $3.75 million to the City of Peterborough under the Municipal Housing Infrastructure Program.

The funding comes through the program’s Housing-Enabling Core Servicing Stream, which includes $400 million to help build, repair, and maintain municipal roads, bridges, and culverts that will promote housing growth in communities across Ontario.

The city had applied for the funding to upgrade infrastructure in the Towerhill Road and Fairbairn Street area, where a subdivision is currently being constructed off Lily Lake Road.

According to a media release from Peterborough-Kawartha MPP Dave Smith, the provincial funding will facilitate the construction of up to 4,956 new homes in Peterborough.

A 43-year-old Peterborough woman has been convicted of careless driving causing death in connection with a collision in 2023 that killed a three-year-old girl.

At 9 a.m. on March 23, 2023, the girl was struck in the driveway of her family home on Woodglade Boulevard between Kawartha Heights Boulevard and Sherbrooke Street by a southbound SUV that had left the road and jumped the curb.

The girl was transported to Peterborough Regional Health Centre with life-threatening injuries and succumbed to her injuries later that day. Two other children were also in the driveway at the time of the collision, but were not injured.

After a five-month investigation, Peterborough police charged a 43-year-old Peterborough woman with careless driving causing bodily harm or death.

On Friday (January 24,), the woman was found guilty of careless driving causing death under the Highway Traffic Act. Police have not released the identity of the woman, who is scheduled to be sentenced on Friday, February 28.

Penalties for careless driving causing death include a fine of $2,000 to $50,000 and/or imprisonment up to two years, and a driver’s licence suspension up to five years. A careless driving conviction will also result in six demerit points as well a significant increase to car insurance premiums.

Peterborough city council will be considering a proposed new program that would allow the City of Peterborough to expropriate land in the central area of the city on behalf of private developers for housing projects.

The proposal will come before council on Monday evening (January 27) at its general committee meeting, which will also serve as a public meeting on the proposal as per requirements of the Planning Act.

A report from Blair Nelson, the city’s commissioner of infrastructure, planning and growth management, proposes amending the city’s central area community improvement plan to add the “Strategic Land Acquisition and Conveyance Program,” while also expanding the existing central area community improvement plan area to conform with the expanded central area in the city’s new official plan.

The Strategic Land Acquisition and Conveyance Program would mean the city could forcibly acquire land from a property owner, “conveying it to a third-party for the purpose of carrying out development and redevelopment” according to the report.

For example, if a private developer had already acquired a substantial number of contiguous properties for a housing development but was unable to convince a remaining property owner to sell a desired property, the developer could apply to the program to have the city expropriate that property and sell it to the developer.

“Acquiring the land needed for redevelopment can be a challenging, costly and time-consuming endeavor,” reads the report. “Failure to assemble an appropriately sized and configured land assembly can lead to less-than-optimal development proposals, failure of certain projects to come to fruition, delay in the provision of much needed housing supply, continuation or exacerbation of land use conflicts and ultimately an inability to meet the vision outlined for the City’s Central Area as depicted in the Official Plan.”

The report states that the intention of the program is so the city “can strategically acquire properties that could be key components of private redevelopment projects” when the private developer has had difficulty acquiring the properties.

PDF: City of Peterborough Central Area Community Project Area

There are three pieces of provincial legislation — the Planning Act, the Municipal Act, and the Expropriations Act — that give the city the power to acquire land in this manner.

Section 28(1) of the Planning Act allows a municipality to designate a “community improvement project area,” which it defines as “a municipality or an area within a municipality, the community improvement of which in the opinion of the council is desirable because of age, dilapidation, overcrowding, faulty arrangement, unsuitability of buildings or for any other environmental, social or community economic development reason.”

In 2011, the City of Peterborough adopted a community improvement plan for its central area. Under the same section of the Planning Act, when a municipality’s official plan designates a community improvement project area, the municipality is allowed to acquire land within that area.

To encourage development and redevelopment in the central area, the city’s community improvement plan has included several incentive programs based on tax increments and grants that have evolved over time.

Although Section 106(1) of the Municipal Act normally prohibits municipalities from the “granting of bonuses” to commercial enterprises — including by lending money, selling properties below fair market value, or exempting developers from fees or levies — an exemption to this prohibition is granted in the Planning Act for community improvement plans.

While the Strategic Land Acquisition and Conveyance Program does not involve the city providing financial incentives for developers, it would leverage the city’s powers under provincial legislation to expropriate land for the benefit of a developer.

“This proposed new program is different and would enable the City to become directly involved by using expropriation powers under the Municipal Act to acquire and convey land to a developer who has demonstrated its development will meet key goals and deliverables as set out in the program and helps to achieve the overall vision of the (Community Improvement Plan for its Central Area) and Official Plan for the Central Area,” reads the report.

Although the Municipal Act does give municipalities the power to expropriate privately owned land through the provincial Expropriations Act, municipalities have traditionally only done so when the land is required for public use, such as for public utilities, infrastructure, or highway development.

However, there have been situations where Ontario municipalities have expropriated land for the use of private commercial interests.

In the late 1990s, the City of Toronto expropriated 10 properties at the intersection of Yonge and Dundas streets and sold the assembled land to a private developer. In the early 2000s, the County of Oxford expropriated a parcel of commercial land so that Toyota Canada could build a manufacturing plant in Woodstock near London.

More recently, the Region of Waterloo — with funding support from the Ontario government — has been attempting to expropriate 770 acres of farmland in Wilmot Township to create serviced land for future industrial projects.

As for the City of Peterborough’s proposed Strategic Land Acquisition and Conveyance Program, the report states it would be “net neutral” to the city’s budget, with all costs associated with expropriating land to be recouped from the developer.

“Use of this program would be an exceptional last resort for a developer because the cost of acquiring property through expropriation is high and staff-time intensive,” the report reads. “The rationalization for expropriating land must demonstrate a strong financial and logistical benefit to the community.”

Applications to use the program would have conditions, including that the developer has demonstrated “considerable effort” to acquire the desired property on its own, the developer already owns “a significant majority” (60 per cent or more) of the land proposed for development, and that the developer’s acquisition of the additional land would “directly result in a more suitable development” (such as a regularly shaped building lot).

“The proposed development must demonstrate that acquisition of the additional land will result in a significant increase in the number of dwelling units to be provided compared to a development that excludes the said lands,” the report adds.

All applications under the Strategic Land Acquisition and Conveyance Program would be approved by council. The process for land use approvals, including zoning by-law amendments and site plan approvals, would also be followed.

With a shared commitment to building homes, fostering partnerships, and strengthening community, Habitat for Humanity Peterborough & Kawartha Region (Habitat PKR) and Peterborough & The Kawarthas Home Builders Association (PKHBA) each have an additional $15,000 to apply to their missions following a successful holiday fundraiser.

The two organizations have announced that their seventh annual charity auction, held on December 5, raised more than $30,000 for their endeavours.

This event brought together local businesses, industry professionals, and community supporters. With funds split evenly, PKHBA and Habitat PKR will each receive $15,412 to advance their missions and support the professional home-building industry in the region.

“PKHBA supports Habitat for Humanity PKR because we all need to work together to build the housing our community needs,” PKHBA executive officer Rebecca Schillemat told kawarthaNOW.

“We need all types of housing, and Habitat is the only organization providing affordable home ownership. When families have the stability of owning a home it helps them grow, and it often helps them move up in the housing continuum into market home ownership.”

Schillemat said her organization also believes in providing decent housing for the community and building strength, stability, and self-reliance through shelter.

“PKHBA’s mission aligns with Habitat for Humanity PKR’s mission in providing housing in our community. We can do more together. We value the partnerships and results of our combined efforts.”

In addition to the money raised for the two organizations, the charity auction was also a success for other reasons. Schillemat said local high school students donated “amazing” small construction projects to support the auction.

“The donations showed support for housing in our greater community, and it showcased the talent of students in high school construction programs,” she noted.

There was also another win when auctioneer Jason McIntosh asked for additional donations when guests turned in their auction paddles at the end of the night.

“Everyone who handed back their auction paddles donated $25 to Habitat for Humanity PKR,” Schillemat said. “It was an amazing boost at the end of a great event.”

As for Habitat for Humanity PKR, CEO Susan Zambonin noted the community effort made the event possible.

“We are deeply grateful for the overwhelming support from our community,” Zambonin said in a media release. “This event demonstrates the incredible impact we can achieve when we come together to address housing challenges and create a brighter future for families in our region.”

Habitat for Humanity PKR also gave a shout-out to Reliance Home Comfort, the presenting sponsor, along with other sponsors, local businesses, volunteers, and attendees who donated auction items that contributed to the successful night.

According to Habitat for Humanity PKR, the organization is dedicated to creating a world where everyone has a safe and decent place to live. By mobilizing volunteers, businesses, and community partners, it aims to construct affordable housing that empowers local families to achieve stability and build brighter futures.

Money raised at the auction will help Habitat PKR construct additional homes for families in need in the region, the release said.

PKHBA has been represented the home-building industry in Peterborough and the Kawarthas region since 1956. As a non-profit organization, it advocates for effective government policy, supports member businesses, and strives to foster excellence in homebuilding.

Proceeds from the auction will enable PKHBA to continue its work in improving home-building needs in the area, according to the release.

The original version of this story has been updated with a correction. The charity auction was the seventh annual, not second annual, event.