Yaletown supervised injection site leadership addresses lawsuit

The head of the Overdose Prevention Society (OPS), Sarah Blyth, is breaking her silence following a lawsuit against the City of Vancouver aimed at moving the supervised injection site in Yaletown.

The petition, filed in the B.C. Supreme Court, was launched by Seymour Residences (SR), a subsidiary of the multi-million dollar Wall Financial Group, which claims the OPS has negatively impacted residents and the neighbourhood.

Although Blyth understands there are challenges that come with having a supervised injection site in the community, she says, “If you take it away, more people will die — and that’s just a fact.”

Blyth says the easiest solution would be to find a new location for the site to go, adding that there needs to be a collaborative effort to find a new spot.

“If they want to find another place where the OPS [can go,] take out the map and bring forward some locations that would be better,” Blyth told CityNews. “That would be the most ideal situation.”

“Seeing this petition, it’s just really sad…it’s so easy to complain about something — it’s difficult to work together and find proper solutions.”

One solution she proposed was to open another OPS in Yaletown to “help take the pressure off.”

“The solution to this is not getting rid of a life-saving site, we can work towards making a better site,” she said. “Showing that there isn’t humanity towards people who are suffering and need help is not a good state of affairs. We really need to do better than that.”

In the petition, SR claims that the OPS in Yaletown, located at 1101 Seymour Street, has negatively impacted both residents of their building at 1111 Seymour Street as well as the surrounding neighborhood since its inception in March 2021. Presenting evidence in the form of photos and written accounts, SR cites incidents of assaults, break-ins, theft, open drug use, presence of human waste, and general disturbances since the site opened.

Following the opening of the site, “there was an immediate surge in issues at Seymour Residences, including incidents of people loitering or passing out along the block and in the entryway, of people attempting to gain access to the courtyard and the parkade (by following tenants trying to exit or enter their home) and of attempted and successful break-ins and theft,” said SR in affidavits filed with the petition.

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The petition argues that city council violated its own zoning bylaw, Bylaw No. 10996, when it approved the overdose prevention site (OPS) in 2020.

SR contends that the use of the city property as an OPS is not authorized by the bylaw.

According to the petition, the site is not appropriately zoned for an overdose prevention site, and the council failed to consider the restrictions outlined in the bylaw when approving the lease, which the petition deems “unreasonable.”

CityNews reached out to the City of Vancouver for comment, which said in a statement, “We cannot provide a response as it is before the courts.”

The lawsuit seeks to have the court overturn the decision made by city council, which granted Vancouver Coastal Health the lease for the overdose prevention site.

None of these allegations have been proven in court.