By Cara Waters
Inner-city Melburnians say the delay in building the city’s second safe-injecting room is costing lives.
The Yes In My Back Yard movement – or YIMBYs – is gaining traction as a counterpoint to business groups and others who oppose plans for the CBD facility.
Melbourne CBD residents (from left) Jill Mellon-Robertson, Daniel Daley, Ashley Kotorac and Chris Lamb in Flinders Court, which is a popular location for drug users.Credit: Eddie Jim
Daniel Daley said after seeing overdoses in the laneway behind his Elizabeth Street apartment, he welcomed the approval of the second injecting room, first promised by the Andrews government in 2020.
Daley, 32, is part of a group of CBD residents who on Sunday will launch a “Keep Our City Alive” campaign and call for a supervised injecting room in the city centre.
“I have a responsibility as a member of the community, as someone who lives in the city, to say, ‘It is happening, these people are dying near me, I don’t want them dying’,” he said.
“Everyone in this campaign is a YIMBY. It is us stepping us saying, ‘Yes I live here and yes, I would like to see this happen’.”
Residents say they have grown frustrated by the dominance of the Not In My Back Yard (NIMBY) movement, a term commonly applied in relation to property development.
Former police commissioner Ken Lay is reviewing locations for an injecting room in the CBD and will release his report in the middle of the year after being repeatedly delayed by COVID-19 and what Premier Daniel Andrews has described as changing drug patterns.
Community consultation on the report ended on Friday and a government spokesman said a decision had not been made yet, despite the government purchasing the former Yooralla building in Flinders Street for a reported $40.3 million in 2021 as the site for a safe-injecting room.
“We will await the findings of Ken Lay’s report, which is expected in the middle of this year,” the spokesman said.
Former police chief commissioner Ken Lay is delivering a report into the proposed second supervised injecting room. Credit: Penny Stephens
Campaigning by residents was instrumental in delivering the North Richmond supervised injecting room and people like Daley, Chris Lamb and Jill Mellon-Roberts want to show their support for a similar facility in the CBD.
However, not all CBD residents support a supervised injecting room in the city centre.
Residents 3000 president Rafael Camillo said he could not speak for the group as a whole but as an individual, he thought the government should be focused on rehabilitation facilities for drug users rather than another supervised injecting room.
“For me it is like a Band-Aid solution to the problem,” he said. “I would prefer to put money and time to rehabilitation beds and try to help those people who have put up their hands and are asking for help.”
Lamb has lived in the CBD for 13 years and said “the sooner the better” for a supervised injecting room.
“I have consistently criticised those who love the idea of an injecting room but not in my backyard,” the 77-year-old said. “There are no backyards in Melbourne. We are all in the same yard and it is a front yard, not a backyard. You have to understand we are all in this together.”
The campaign has particular resonance for CBD resident Mellon-Roberts following the death of her son, who was a heroin user.
“It is extremely necessary,” she said. “I don’t want other people’s kids to be statistics. Mine is.”
The most recent data collected by the Victorian Alcohol and Drug Association records 309 heroin-related ambulance callouts in the City of Melbourne in the 2021-22 financial year.
The figures show there was a 28 per cent increase in heroin-related ambulance callouts in the City of Melbourne between the 2020 financial year and 2021.
There were 29 people who died from a heroin overdose in the City of Melbourne in the two years to June 2022 and the municipality has the highest number of heroin deaths of any Victorian local government area.
Victorian Alcohol and Drug Association chief executive Sam Biondo said there was a clear rise in heroin overdoses in Melbourne’s city centre since COVID-19 lockdowns ended.
“We need to find solutions to these extremely complex problems,” he said.
“Telling people to go away isn’t going to work. Telling people not to use drugs has been an abject failure for many decades. Harm reduction does save lives and through a mechanism like a medically supervised injecting room, we are able to support people to move away from their addictions as well as access better services.”
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