Hastings County owns and operates 40 supportive units for singles through the Home for Good program.
The entire portfolio includes 870 units (59.06%) for seniors and 563 units (38.15%) dedicated for families.
They are distributed throughout Hastings County, including Belleville and Trenton.
Belleville Councillor Bill Sandison told the committee that, “If you look at the available units – 1473, you look at the wait list – 2614, even if we could double the amount of units we have, we’d still have in excess of a thousand (people) still on our wait list.”
He added, “It’s not a problem we’re going to be able to solve today here or even in the very near term. What I would like is to challenge the team for next year just to see if we can come up with a sort of a paradigm shift in terms of our thinking as I think of it as social housing.”
He notes that the federal and provincial governments are announcing funding programs but it’s a “fairly broad brush in what they’ve announced, but certainly there’s impetus there.”
Sandison made a second point.
CAO Jim Pine says the county is working closely with the communities and probably looking at a mixed model and “working with all the communities to develop a land availability inventory.”
He pointed out there is a money issue and it needs financial support from both the provincial and federal government.
Belleville Councillor Chris Malette pointed out the city is working with Habitat for Humanity on the issue of the former city police station. Warden Rick Phillips indicated the county has been “working with MPs and MPPs and we’ll continue to work with those officials for funds to help us and we need land to build on.”
You can see the Housing Services Annual Report for 2021 HERE.
