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Equitable & Safe Communities.
ensuring a safe community for all requires intentional policy and community engagement, especially with those who are most disenfranchised.
Why This Matters.
Communities across the country are integrating smart growth, environmental justice, and equitable development approaches to design and build healthy, sustainable, and inclusive neighbourhoods. However, ensuring a safe community for all requires intentional policy and community engagement, especially with those who are most disenfranchised.
A safe and equitable community is one where harms to residents are prevented whenever possible, including self-harm. A safe community looks to reduce and heal harms that cannot be prevented as effectively as possible.
Safety and well-being are interlinked at a systems level, as is safety with community connection. The more a community connected is and accessible to all residents, the safer and healthier it is.
The is a wide-spread assumption that Opioid addiction and mortality is most common among the unhoused, but in fact men who work in trades seem most vulnerable, with those in that occupation accounting for roughly 30% – 50% of deaths.
You can see on the charts that Simcoe County has both a higher incidence of opioid related mortality and proportion of population that work in the trades.
A recent Public Health Ontario report concluded that support is needed for, “the expansion of access to harm reduction services, low-barrier opioid treatment, and a safer supply of regulated drugs.”
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Did You Know…?
- According to the Simcoe Muskoka District Health Unit (SMDHU), in the 19 months of available data since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic (March, 2020 to September, 2021) there have been 245 opioid-related deaths in Simcoe Muskoka.
- That is nearly 70 percent higher than the 145 opioid-related deaths in the 19 months prior to the start of the pandemic (August, 2018 to February, 2020).
What You Can Do As A Municipal Leader:
- Form a Drug and Harm Reduction Strategy/Committee
- Enable low-income households to participate in our increasingly digital world by providing free WiFi in municipal facilities, expanding access to a host of social services, employment and education opportunities
- Consult with residents, especially those who are disenfranchised to find out what they need to address underlying systemic issues of poverty, racism, stigma and discrimination.
- Work with disenfranchised individuals and community partners to address systemic issues of poverty, racism, stigma and discremination and increase investment in initiatives to address these issues, including anti-hate and anti-racism initiatives
- Set timelines and budgets to progressively work toward 24/7/365 public washroom and drinking water access.
- Develop rights-based homelessness encampment strategies that do not use municipal bylaws to criminalize poverty and homelessness.
Local organizations that can help.
United Way Simcoe Muskoka
Website: https://uwsimcoemuskoka.ca/
Email: bshelley@uwsimcoemuskoka.ca
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