Belleville’s first responder chiefs were the guests of honour at today’s Homelessness Task Force meeting led by Belleville Mayor Neil Ellis.
Belleville Fire Chief Dan Smith, Belleville Police Chief Murray Rodd, and Chief of Emergency Services for Hastings County Carl Bowker answered today’s questions regarding homelessness, mental health, and addictions in their respective fields.
When asked about the biggest gaps that are directly impacting their ability to do their work effectively, Belleville Police Chief Murray Rodd said every touch point that is to come at the Hub is underresourced.
“People can’t be helped today, tomorrow, or the next day, they’re in a queue somewhere. There’s no interruption of the cycle they are experiencing, so we are just perpetually dealing with that,” he said.
“The gaps appear to be in the resourcing of all of the service providers. Homelessness is not new, but everyone who used to have these issues presented publicly had a place to go at some point. And now, that’s not the case. Even the most extreme cases of criminality and mental health crisis, there’s no such relief for the community. That is a huge gap.”
Councillor Thompson asked the trio on what can be done about individuals living in encampments.
“Is there a way we can get in with the homeless, into the shelters, and maybe get some more guidance for them?”
Chief of Emergency Services for Hastings County Carl Bowker said it takes time to build trust and relationships with that area of the population, but they have been visiting the encampments, ensuring medication compliance, wellness checks, monitoring vital signs, and doing blood draws.
“We’re starting to meet some of the healthcare needs of this population on their terms, rather than the traditional 9-1-1 approach. With HART Hub funding starting to flow in September, we’re excited to announce the development of a regional team that will be looking beyond the lens of Belleville and Quinte West and start to go into some of these encampments and the rural areas,” he said.
“Work is being done and we’re seeing an impact on the front line, particularly from a first responder and healthcare perspective. We’re taking that approach and getting boots on the ground inside these encampments.”
Belleville Fire Chief Dan Smith said his team attends them ‘almost daily’.
“When we’re there, our staff are assessing them for safety, we do send our Fire Prevention staff out whenever we receive questions, complaints, or a response to a fire,” he said.
“So the homemade wood stoves, if it’s unsafe, we’ll remove it. If they have a campfire under the tarp we’ll help them move it out from underneath, just to make it as safe as we possibly can.”
The Chiefs were also asked about collaborations they have both in the community or provincially to support these concerns.
Belleville Fire Chief Dan Smith spoke about when the City of Belleville declared an emergency about a year and a half ago.
“We declared that emergency and it wasn’t long after I was with emergency managers from across Canada and they asked me to speak about what we’ve gone through in Belleville. What came out of that through collaboration is other communities stepping up, they’re also doing those declarations and reaching out to the province,” he said.
“It’s not just Belleville anymore saying ‘Province of Ontario, we need help’, it’s coming from across Ontario. Large cities such as Mississauga reaching out to Belleville for advice on how to declare. Have we seen major changes come from that? Not yet, but we are still hopeful.”
Chief of Emergency Services for Hastings County Carl Bowker said they certainly have a lot more untraditional partners than they have in the past.
“It used to be the three of us sitting in this room and if we look around at the table now and the partners that we communicate with on a regular basis, such as United Way. We had someone without proper footwear in the middle of winter and we just called up Brandi Hodge and her team, this was going to be a 9-1-1 call or a hospital visit, just for something simple like that,” he said.
“It’s these relationships that we’ve formed by sitting in the same rooms and having a greater understanding of what other community partners can do and how we can better support each other. We communicate a lot with non healthcare partners at a level we never did before. They’re forming and it just becomes so much apart of our practice that we don’t really notice it anymore.”
Belleville Police Chief Murray Rodd said anyone who can interrupt the cycle of poverty or interrupt disfunction is a partner to them.
“Every one of those prevenative measures prevents this from blossoming even worse than it is. This is truly a life and death crisis and the fact that we have so many survivors is the miracle. The state of health that people are presenting to Chief Bowker’s team is abysmal. When there’s nobody else around, our people are intruding into that space and interacting with those people.”
Following the meeting, Belleville Mayor Neil Ellis shared that Police, Fire, and EMS are ‘at the core of helping’ and members of the Task Force requested a meeting with the trio. The group meets biweekly with three or four ‘witnesses’ to continue pushing the conversation forward and seeing how the City can continue addressing the concerns of homelessness, mental health, and addictions.
Mayor Ellis says three meetings in, he feels that it’s going well so far.
The next Belleville Homelessness Task Force meeting will be held on February 4th, 2026 for 2:30pm.
