A women’s residential addiction recovery facility in Barrie should be up and running this summer.
Cornerstone to Recovery will have a Tiffin Street address.
“The contract is signed, the drawings are done, and the money is exchanged where it needs to go and the opening is hopefully this July 2021,” Coun. Natalie Harris said at Monday night’s city council meeting. “It was a lot of work for all of us and it’s going to be a great thing to see to fruition.”
Blaine Hobson, Cornerstone’s executive director, says an agreement has been signed to purchase the Barrie property. The facility will combine a 12-bed women’s residential recovery facility with six beds for transitional housing.
Cornerstone is an addiction recovery support agency and recovery community serving York Region and the Greater Toronto Area. Its mission is to support those impacted by addiction to achieve emotional, physical and spiritual wellness.
Last October, council both endorsed the Cornerstone facility and an interest-free, $400,000 loan to renovate a building for the centre’s Barrie operations. The city also entered into a sole-source, two-year agreement, with an option to renew for an additional two years, with Cornerstone to place clothing bins at city facilities, or at mutually agreed upon locations on public land, for the sole purpose of funding its residential addiction recovery services.
“The bins will be out soon to divert the textiles from our landfill,” Harris said. “This is a great accomplishment for our city.”
Barrie is experiencing an opioid crisis, the Ward 6 councillor has said, as well as deaths from other drugs, including alcohol. In addition to its recovery and transitional housing beds, this centre will provide six months of addiction treatment, including return-to-work programs. The plan is to include a men’s addiction treatment centre and community space in the future.
The $400,000 loan to Cornerstone is funded from the city’s community benefit reserve, secured against the building and to be repaid in equal instalments, beginning in 2021, during a 20-year period. Cornerstone will also pursue other funding opportunities and, if received, repay the outstanding loan to the city upon receipt of this funding.
The loan will help subsidize the first three years of the program. Three million dollars have already been raised by outside donations toward the capital required for this project.
Cornerstone has said the Barrie facility will be staffed 24/7 by its counselling team members. Its programs will be for the unique needs of women — with trauma support and a case manager for survivors of trauma and/or human trafficking. There will be increased safety and security systems and protocols for residents and staff, and there will be a day treatment program for women who cannot stay in a residential centre overnight, due to child care.
Cornerstone has said its cost for each residential guest is $15,000, and it asks each one to pay $7,500 for a three-month program. Cornerstone covers the other half. For those who cannot afford this, Cornerstone says it works with them to create an individualized plan or a further subsidized amount. No one is ever turned away because they cannot afford treatment, Cornerstone says.
All payments by guests are put into a community contribution fund, which is used to cover Cornerstone’s programming costs.
Textile recycling sites in Barrie will provide a sustainable source of funding to open, maintain and grow the women’s residential centre.
City staff have reviewed Cornerstone’s information and confirmed that its operations in other communities, supported in part by the textile diversion program, appear to have a balanced budget.
Cornerstone uses a small chute bin requiring three feet of frontage clearance to open the door. It uses routing and work order software to optimize collection schedules. The sensors in the bins trigger a ‘ready for collection’ message and this appears to help with the quantity of spillover donations left around collection bins which have been a concern in many communities.
Cornerstone is a registered charity and recovery agency based in Newmarket that provides addiction recovery programs for individuals and families. Its doors opened in 2004 with the intention to provide a safe and productive place for those going from addiction to sustainable, community based recovery.
It’s designed to be collaborative and constructive, as well as a home, Cornerstone says. It also provides a variety of day and residential programs to help individuals develop the skills, confidence and connections necessary to change their own lives, and rejoin their community.
