Emergency action plan needed on homelessness, Belleville mayor says

The number of people living on the street in Belleville, Ont., has skyrocketed in recent years, according to a longtime politician, and he wants the province to come up with an emergency action plan.

"From 2006 to '14 we basically had some couch-surfing, but really no visible homelessness. I went away for basically two terms — eight years — came back, and we have approximately 200 homeless," Neil Ellis told CBC Radio's Ontario Morning earlier this week.

"So it's grown and grown and growing, and there doesn't seem to be an end to it."

Ellis, who was the Liberal MP for the Bay of Quinte from 2015 to 2021, said municipalities can't be left holding the bag to the degree they are.

"It's basically a health crisis. It's a social economic crisis. And I don't see that successive governments at the provincial level ... are tackling any type of thing that we can see — whether it's poor policy decisions, or they're just not interested in it," Ellis said.

"When I look at it, why aren't they interested? Basically the cost, but the homeless don't vote, and I hate to say it. But it's a social crisis right now and we need to get out in front of it."

Lobby higher governments

Ellis said as mayor he gets about five to 15 calls a week from residents about homelessness, and the MPP gets fewer. The mayor said residents don't realize they should call upper levels of government and lobby them instead.

Belleville's Grace Inn is an emergency overnight homeless shelter and six-bedroom transitional house. It's director of operations, Ashley Vader, said it opened in December 2019, just before the COVID-19 pandemic. After that, the number of people living rough on the street boomed.

"You've got so many different people from different backgrounds, from having experienced homelessness due to the systemic cycle that they've lived through ... to individuals who have never thought that they would ever experience homelessness," she said.

The figure of about 200 homeless doesn't include people living in encampments and young people bouncing around between friends, Vader said.

Permanent residences few and far between

The Hastings County area has transitional housing, Vader said, but permanent housing for the homeless is sparse and not enough to meet the demand.

"When we're talking about the housing stock in this area, it is vastly unavailable. It is vastly unaffordable for folks who are on social assistance of any kind," she said.

"If we don't get it under control, it will be a crisis. We are already in a housing crisis and it's just going to continue to expand and expand."

In an email, a spokesperson for the Minister of Municipal Affairs and Housing said the County of Hastings can choose how to use provincial funds to best address and prevent homelessness. The county received more than $6.1 million for 2023-24, "an increase of nearly 80 per cent from 2022-23," spokesperson Alexandru Cioban wrote.

The county also received more than $2.6 million through various federal and provincial initiatives on housing and homelessness prevention programs, Cioban wrote.

Hastings County covers more than 5,000 square kilometres and has 14 municipalities — including communities such as Bancroft, Tweed, Quinte West and Madoc. Its population was about 146,000 in 2021, according to census data.