BELLEVILLE – Cardboard box shelters in Market Square at an annual Sleep Out! So Others Can Sleep In event. It’s supposed to give people an idea of what it’s like to be homeless. Photo by Suzanne Coolen
BELLEVILLE – QNet News has done a host of stories on shelter for the homeless in the Quinte region over the winter. It’s led us to ask the question: what role should municipal government play in finding shelter for the homeless?
Our first story was about the options homeless people had. One of them was an emergency shelter opened by the local branch of the Canadian Mental Health Association on the weekend of Jan. 5 to 7.
That was a bitterly cold weekend and the CMHA was asked by Hastings County to set up an emergency shelter overnight to give the area’s homeless a place to stay warm.
We wondered if this was enough and in our second story we found out that local experts think a more permanent solution is needed.
In that story, Sandie Sidsworth, executive director of the local CMHA, said that more social housing is an important part of a permanent solution. At the moment, there’s not enough of it.
Garnet Thompson, Belleville city councillor, said that Hastings County, which Belleville is a part of, owns 1,427 social housing units and the waiting list is over 1,2oo people.
“That’s a large number of people … it would be nice if we could provide housing for everybody, but right now that’s not feasible,” Thompson said.
Thompson said that their main funding for projects to help with housing comes from the federal and provincial governments.
“Each municipality can’t afford to build their own,” Thompson said.
He said the federal government has been better recently about designating funds for social housing. He went on to say that the municipal government needs to continue lobby the province for more funding to make sure they “follow their mandate.”
Thompson says getting a handle on the number of homeless in the area is another issue. Such a number does not exist and it’s a problem Thompson says they are working to fix.
“Right now we’re doing a homeless survey through Bridge Street United Church.”
Thompson said that them. project is being funded by city council and the church will do a study on Hasting County to determine how many people are homeless in the community.
Councillor Mitch Panciuk says Belleville often works with community organizations like Habitat for Humanity to help with the housing issue. Beyond that he said they have a partnership with Hastings County to help provide housing, and they spend “hundreds and hundreds of thousands of dollars” on it.
“I would suggest that is not really effectively working for us and that we need to start taking a look at what we can do in a more independent way to deal with it,” Panciuk said, “I think we need to get better results.”
He said Belleville is the largest population centre in Hastings County, with the highest demand and need for social housing. However, they have not built any additional units in the past few years.
“After we get through this year’s municipal election. I think the city of Belleville needs to sit down and have a hard look at what our needs are,” Panciuk said.
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