Belleville council has unanimously and enthusiastically supported a motion by Mayor Ellis to ask the provincial government to declare homelessness an economic, social, and health crisis
The motion asks the province to step up with much more financial and services support saying municipalities don’t have the resources to deal with increasing numbers of homeless people.
Councillor Kathryn Brown said it was time the province offered more mental health and addiction services services along with rent support.
“I understand why the province made the decision many, many years ago to discontinue psychiatric hospitals but what we were told was that all of these additional services would be put in place and those additional services never materialized.”
Mayor Ellis said when he was mayor previously, from 2006 to 2014, he didn’t receive any calls from people worried about the homeless. Now he says he receives one to six calls a day on the issue.
