Belleville’s “critical” housing shortage will be the subject of a special council meeting in the hope of securing more funding and information.

“We have a critical problem here,” Mayor Mitch Panciuk said Saturday at the Quinte Sports and Wellness Centre.

“We can’t bring people in to fill unfilled jobs if they have nowhere to live,” he told reporters after his speech at the New Year’s levee held by council.

Panciuk told the crowd council’s first priority is addressing the housing crisis.

He said the special meeting will be a housing summit – a concept he proposed during last fall’s election campaign. It may occur in early March.

“We’re not alone in trying to deal with these issues,” Panciuk said afterward, adding the provincial and federal governments offer funding which could help, but Belleville needs to know “what we have to do as a city to unlock” those dollars and how local developers can be part of the solutions.

He said the hope is to meet with delegates from the federal and provincial governments plus the Canada Mortgage and Housing Corp. and other organizations “to get everybody aligned on the same page” for a “made-in-Belleville solution that addresses our immediate and future housing needs.”

The meeting is to be co-chaired by Ruth Estwick, executive officer from the Quinte Home Builders’ Assoc., and Bob Cottrell, president of Belleville’s All-Together Affordable Housing Corp.

Area agencies have said the shortages of affordable and available housing are worsening.

Panciuk said he’s spoken to people in need of housing and “it’s crazy how they’re struggling to find somewhere to live.”

He said the shortage of rental units is only one part of the crisis but a key one.

“Our housing strategy will depend on funding from the National Housing Initiative among other investments from the federal government,” he said.

“This is an election year, and the federal government needs to show us the resources to make our plans happen,” Panciuk later added.

That can’t come soon enough for levee attendee Raychel Weese and her family.

She and her husband, a call-centre employee, have four children younger than age 10. Weese said she sells books through direct sales but is trying to start her own business.

“Rental costs have kind of skyrocketed,” she said.

“We’re in a tiny three-bedroom right now and it’s costing us $1,400 a month.”

Five years ago the same unit cost $800 monthly, Weese said.

If they want a yard or anything larger, it’s in the $1,600 range, she added.

“My husband’s constantly taking extra hours.

“Before we moved we had two floors, three bedrooms – really good-sized bedrooms – and one-and-a-half bathrooms, and that cost us $1,000 three years ago.”

Their apartment-size clothes washer and dryer didn’t fit in their new place, so they now have to use laundromats, and they’ve endured frozen pipes and “all of Christmas without heat.”

In terms of value for money in the last few years, Weese said, “Everything’s downgraded except the

money.”