Developing action on housing and homelessness

An effort is getting underway to develop an Action Plan to achieve some action on the Hastings County 10-year Housing and Homelessness Plan.

On Wednesday, the Hastings County Community and Human Services Committee approved steps to recommend a consultant be hired.

It also put forward funding applications to support an Indigenous Homelessness Review and issue a Request for Proposal to assess costs.

It recommends consultants be hired to complete a youth homelessness review.

Belleville Councillor Chris Malette told the committee members they should  “hammer home the fact” to MPs and MPPs that most funding is one-time only

“It’s a tenuous situation to have them know that we don’t have good secure ongoing funding for an awful lot of these initiatives when the problem is so enormous and widespread.”

Malette added, “It’s incumbent on all of us, if we do get a chance, to really hammer that home.”
Belleville Councillor Bill Sandison said, “If we’re going to create this master plan give us sort of a cohesive cohesive approach to the issue we support…I think we need to sort of look at what are the short term gains or opportunities that might be available to us.  In advance of heading down the path of consultants…I’d like to ask for a staff report to come back to this committee at the next meeting.”

He added, “So we can sort of look at this thing with a broad brush in terms of what might be available to us right now.  So for the existing structures, do we have any space on those grounds where we could add additional units to the units that exist?  Do we have the capability to create new units on the existing land that’s there?”

Director Suzanne Ritchie Raymond said key reports will be coming to the committee in March and April on the housing.

“In March we will be doing an update report on the housing program. That will show how many units we have, what’s our waiting list, what’s the turnover, what have been some of the challenges through COVID, and what’s the current wait time as of the end of 2021.  And we’ll be comparing that to previous years just to show you what’s changing within the system and talk about some of the challenges in terms of supporting our tenants and managing that…taking that longer term look…actually look at the properties that community housing providers have as well as what Hastings County owns.”

“Is it appropriate to continue to invest the state of good repairs in some buildings if the conditions are deteriorating. And we could get additional leverage out of those sites. Perhaps redevelop properties or add on to existing buildings.”