By Kendall Worth
I like to, from time to time, provide an update on the ongoing Housing Crises here in Halifax. My Journalism is all about bringing poverty related issues to the forefront, and homelessness is part of the population of people living in poverty, here in Halifax. According to This Report released by the Affordable Housing Association Nova Scotia, there are currently 1155 people actively homeless here in Halifax. Also The helping end Homeless in Nova Scotia facebook page is showing evidence of housing crises happening all over Nova Scotia. This means Halifax is not alone in dealing with the homeless crises, in Nova Scotia.
Before going further with this post, I want to take a moment to give a Shout out to the volunteer moderators of the Helping End Homeless Nova Scotia Facebook page. You are doing great work on your page with helping these in need. I thank you for what you are doing to help.
Right now, almost at the end of January, things continue to look like that there is no end in sight to the housing crises. These days, you continue to see brand new buildings where rents are advertised starting at anywhere from $1700 a month to $1950 a month for 1 Bedroom apartments. These days, in order to have affordable rent for an apartment you have to be lucky enough to either be living in rent-geared-to-income housing, or living in Not for profit housing. The figures I mentioned above are the rents in the private market, these days. In the Last post I wrote on this topic, I raised a lot of tough questions regrading the housing crisis. Even though more pallet homes are becoming available, Pallet temporary shelters are not the answer for long term housing.
It seems there is no solution in sight. Since New Years, I have been having conversations with people in my community, who tell me that they are faced with some tough decisions these days. Decisions like possibility living in tents for the rest of their lives, or in some cases leaving Halifax and going back to where they came from, all because they cannot afford housing here in Halifax.
Something else that is not helping these days is Andy Filmore, our new mayor here in Halifax, is behaving aggressively, about wanting homeless encampments removed. The question becomes: with insane rental costs in the privatesector, and lack of availability of low Income housing, and rent-geared-to-income housing, where are these people living in the tents suppose to go after homeless encampments shut down and liing in a tent criminalized?
Also something else that is concerning, is, over these past 3 months there have been 3 deaths within Nova Scotia's homeless population. See Here Here and also see Here. It is very concerning to many that the government just stood on stand-by and allowed this housing crises to continue on long enough, that 3 people ended up dying homeless before the issue could be addressed.
Some I talk to these days, suggest that maybe we need to expand the Not- for-profit housing model. Not for profit housing can be the answer because with the not for profit model, you can do creative things to keep the cost of housing down. Things like fundraising and volunteers do the maintenance work around an apartment building, as steps to keep cost for the renter low.
Either way, this Housing Crisis will not be going away anytime soon.
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