“It’s a very loving space, it’s a very caring space”: how frontline workers centre intentionality at Nora Hendrix Place
For the second of three pieces in our “Invisibilized Intersections” series highlighting harm reduction’s intersections with Indigenous, Black, and racialized communities, we connect with frontline staff at Nora Hendrix Place, a 52-home temporary modular social housing development operated by Hogan’s Alley Society. Located at 258 Union Street on the historic Hogan’s Alley Block, the building prioritizes housing for Black and Indigenous residents who are currently or at risk of facing homelessness. How do they approach frontline support and harm reduction with the communities they support? We chat with Ogochukwu Nwaugo and Bisola Shobowale, the Program Manager and Assistant Program Manager at Nora Hendrix Place, to learn more about the challenges and impacts they’re observing for frontline workers in the toxic drug supply and overdose crisis, and what else is still needed.
On Thursday, September 10, 2026, we will be hosting an “Invisibilized Intersections” panel event to bring the perspectives of these stories in deeper conversation with each other. Visit the event page to learn more, register or join the waitlist, and for further updates: Invisibilized Intersections - event registration.
Located on the historic Hogan’s Alley Block and overlapping with the Downtown Eastside and Chinatown, Nora Hendrix Place provides affordable housing and supportive services for primarily Black and Indigenous residents. The building embodies many unique layers in the social fabric of the neighbourhood — it resists historic and ongoing displacement in Vancouver, whether from the racist and colonial urban planning policies which uprooted the original Hogan’s Alley to the crisis of unaffordable housing that continues in the city today. But it’s also a site where the toxic drug supply and overdose crisis has become a prominent added layer in the daily realities of all who live and work there, too.
“Some days start quietly and end up very chaotic,” says Ogochukwu Nwaugo, the Program Manager at Nora Hendrix Place. “I’m not like an office manager that deals with administrative stuff, or typing, printing, signing documents — no. Sometimes I come to work, we have to do naloxone. We have to resuscitate someone. We have to do CPR. We have to call 911.”
Unpredictability within the toxic drug supply has only increased lately, and sometimes even using naloxone doesn’t garner any response. Oftentimes, the situation evolves faster than the current tools, resources, or even media can keep up with.
“Most times, how I know that there’s a new substance in town, before I even hear it on the radio or in the news, it’s when I see some of the people we are supporting behave differently,” says Nwaugo. “Like change in behaviour, change in how they respond, change in their day-to-day routine.”
Supporting residents through this is a huge challenge, on top of the existing responsibilities that staff undertake at Nora Hendrix Place. Alongside supporting the daily operations of the building, there’s also programming and detailed case management work involved. A lot of time is spent working together with residents to determine their goals, and support with planning to achieve them. It could include helping residents through developing life skills around things like hoarding habits or tidying one’s room, navigating institutions related to employment or the criminal justice system, or supporting them through their journey of substance use and harm reduction.
But Bisola Shobowale, the Assistant Program Manager at Nora Hendrix Place, emphasizes that, “At the end of the day, the work that we do, we are also forming relationships with the residents, community members.”
These relationships are central to how the team at Nora Hendrix Place approaches harm reduction, which includes recognizing and integrating culture as an important part of residents’ lived experiences.
“For the building, for example, the programming, the meals, the activities, the way we communicate — it’s culturally informed,” says Nwaugo. At Nora Hendrix Place, programming that is culturally informed and fosters meaningful relationship-building is just as much a part of their approach to harm reduction as safe supply is.
The building hosts an abundance of programming for its residents, from social activities like movie nights, to bowling, table tennis, and more. But the team also strives to implement dedicated practices like providing sage and smudging for the building, often taking place every month, or when mourning a death in the community. It’s a practice they began for the building’s Indigenous residents, but many other residents have expressed enthusiasm and appreciation at being able to participate.
Practices like these enable the deeper connections that can lead to a fuller understanding of someone’s needs, and an expanded understanding of harm reduction.
“Harm reduction is more than just safe supply. It’s meeting people where they’re at. And that might look like different things,” says Shobowale. “Because we can define support as one thing, but they may know it as another thing. So I think relationship is a very key part of harm reduction.”
Making space for grief and care in frontline work
Understanding the significance of these relationships is necessary for frontline work, but so is reckoning with the constant uncertainty and loss amid the ongoing toxic drug supply and overdose crisis. “At any point, something could happen and you could lose this person, or they could just not be the same forever,” says Shobowale.
Witnessing traumatic events and dealing with grief without proper support are common paths to burnout for many frontline workers. It’s why the team emphasizes the need for frontline workers to be adequately equipped with training, and that robust resources are available and access is encouraged whenever staff need them.
When it comes down to supporting staff through traumatic moments, engaging with someone at their own pace is crucial. Whether someone requires time to process their thoughts, prefers to debrief their experience away from the workplace environment, or needs to reduce their workload, Nwaugo highlights the importance of being open to whatever kind of support can be provided for staff.
Recently there were some deaths in the community that left the team at Nora Hendrix Place grappling with shock and grief. For Nwaugo, having the space to talk about it with others was the support she needed, whether with her supervisor, therapist, or colleagues. Staying grounded in your supports and your own reason for doing this work is crucial, she says.
“You have to have the passion. Ask yourself the ‘why.’ I always ask myself, why are you doing this? Why are you here? Why are you at the frontline?” says Nwaugo. Without that passion, she warns, it’s hard to sustain a long-term commitment to the work, mentally, physically, and otherwise.
This capacity for reflection is necessary on many levels for frontline workers, both in one’s own motivation and in understanding the realities of the people being supported.
“It’s a very loving space, it’s a very caring space, but also it’s an intentional space, especially amidst the ongoing toxic drug supply,” says Shobowale. That intentionality is key, because it means being attentive to the harsh realities that people are dealing with, and the impact of those experiences.
“Because we’re working with people that have crazy life experiences — what they’ve experienced, we haven’t even seen half of it.”
At the intersection between culture and substance use
For many community members, their life experiences have also been uniquely complicated by race and culture.
“I think racism for sure shows up in the general landscape of the work that we do,” says Shobowale. At Nora Hendrix Place, she says it helps that they focus on supporting Black and Indigenous individuals and foster a culture where “we can see the communities and we can see the similarities and differences and cultures, and that’s what brings us together.” But this isn’t always the case when people are seeking support elsewhere.
“In the general landscape, you can see most of our residents, being Indigenous and Black, being described as ‘drug-seeking’ — described as, ‘oh, this person’s a nuisance’,” says Shobowale. In volunteer work she does elsewhere in the neighbourhood, Shobowale has also observed how people’s needs, such as access to bus tickets, continue to be dismissed based on perceptions linked to race.
Shobowale highlights the importance of understanding that, “For some people, using substances is a form of pain management when they’re not able to access the supports that they need in the clinical space.” For those who can’t access support from clinical or other institutional healthcare spaces, they may then seek alternative support in the community to use their substances together.
“But then again, with the racism thing, we have some communities excluding other communities within the substance use community. It shows up in that way, as well,” says Shobowale.
So far, the intersection between culture and substance use “hasn’t been well-explored or well-funded,” in Shobowale’s experience. Future work in this area could start with properly assessing the needs of the people seeking assistance, she says, and identifying what can be done to create spaces where they feel safe, heard, and supported. In settings like a hospital, it would be noticeably different if people were able to easily access sage for smudging, a prayer room for worship, or other culturally informed practices that seem small yet can have a significant impact on someone.
“Even food, especially food, like just being able to access — as little as hot sauce,” says Shobowale. “You know, it doesn’t even have to be grand!”
What else is needed
Other challenges include the difficulties of connecting someone to adequate external supports. Too often, there are long wait times and countless hoops of bureaucracy to jump through, or the resource simply isn’t available when needed. Increasing the accessibility of drug testing sites or making drug testing kits available, for example, is one thing the team says would be impactful. But accessing supports isn’t as straightforward as it should be.
“You can try to connect an individual to a kind of resource that they really need — you will be on hold forever,” says Nwaugo. “Then you drop voice messages, and then you drop text messages, you call back for more than two weeks — nothing is happening. And for those two weeks, what is happening to the individual you’re supporting?”
Nwaugo recalls a time when she called a recommended resource, seeking support for someone in the community who was having a crisis. However, this happened on a weekend while the resource was only open during daytime hours on weekdays. But mental health cannot be put on hold like that.
Even for people seeking to quit substance use, appropriate supports aren’t always available.
“If you go for detox, what’s next? Do you have accommodation, in like another community where you can do better, where you can change your life? Where you can actually be clean, like leave this lifestyle?” says Nwaugo. She often observes higher risks of overdose in those situations, if people end up returning to the same circumstances with little support for meaningfully improving them. After clearing their systems, people may be especially vulnerable to toxicity in the unregulated drug supply.
Ultimately, there are still many areas of harm reduction supports that frontline workers like Nwaugo and Shobowale would like to see expanded upon. Whether it’s ensuring that frontline workers are able to root themselves in care, bringing more nuance to the intersections of race and substance use, or improving the accessibility of needed resources, they hope to see these intentions grow further within the space of harm reduction work.
