MOTION UNDER RULE 5(5): Gov't. (N.S.): Homelessness Crisis

CLAUDIA CHENDER « » : Speaker, I understand that I can't refer to whether a member is present or absent, but I will note that this is one of the few times in the House where quorum is not required. Members don't have to be in the Chamber for this conversation, but I would hope that members would decide to stay, because what we heard today in the scrum from the Premier, when he was asked whether people would be sleeping in tents this Winter, was an unqualified yes. The Premier said, yes, people will sleep in tents this Winter.

He went on to make remarks about how there are always people sleeping rough all year around, et cetera. But the fact that the leader of this province would, without flinching, confirm - in a snowstorm, in a climate like this - that people would be sleeping outside, without an immediate follow-up that their government would do everything within their power to stop that from happening, is a matter not just for late debate but for urgent debate in this Chamber.

Across this province, we have people living in tents, under bridges, in stairways, on couches, in basements, in substandard living conditions, in shelters. That number is growing and growing, and despite some efforts from the government - yes, there are things being announced - it is not making the difference that we need to see.

Since the government was elected two years ago, the number of chronically homeless people here in HRM has doubled. There are now over a thousand actively homeless people in Halifax. A survey conducted in July found that 22.5 per cent of people sleeping on the streets in Halifax reported having lost their housing to a fixed-term lease or renoviction. What we hear is: There's new construction - that's why rental costs are going up. As we've said many times in this Chamber, the cost of rent has gone up more quickly here in Halifax than anywhere in the country, notwithstanding a rent cap, and yet we have a government that refuses to act to protect renters. We hear about balance. We hear about education. But we also need to hear about the 22.5 per cent of people sleeping in tents who lost their housing.

This is not like an academic discussion. This is a discussion about life or death for people who are living outside right now. Unfortunately, although we do have a Winter plan announced, by its own admission, that plan will not come close to meeting the need for the people sleeping outdoors. What is the plan? It is snowing. It is freezing, and we don't have a plan.

We know, here in HRM - I mentioned the thousand people. We don't have as clear counts for the rest of the province because there isn't the capacity to count in the same way, but the South Shore Open Doors Association in October said 124 households, 65 children, just on the South Shore. This government represents the South Shore. I hope that they are advocating internally to find a place for these people to stay indoors this Winter.

In eastern Nova Scotia, 419 people experiencing homelessness when the numbers were last counted, and that would be higher now. There's been an encampment at Grand Parade - we all see it every time we're in downtown Halifax - for months. Twenty tents counted at Grand Parade. In my district, at the tent encampment on Geary Street, the last time I heard, 40 people living in tents in an area probably the size of this Chamber.

The plan isn't going to cut it. The tiny home community on Cobequid Road will have 52 units to provide housing for about 62 people. They will be ready by next Summer, but what will these folks do during the Winter? The province is spending $7.5 million for temporary housing produced by Pallet, 200 units in Nova Scotia - 100 units in HRM in the face of a thousand people that we know of sleeping outdoors. We know that there is, apparently - we heard today and maybe we will hear from the government in their response - today the government finally said, Yes, we're going to have an emergency shelter in HRM, we figured out where it is. But they won't tell us where.

In Dartmouth, we have The Bridge - which I hope the government is not counting in their supported housing numbers because The Bridge is not supported housing. It is a shelter. It is a hotel where people have a room and a toilet. They don't have a kitchen. They don't have anything that resembles an actual home. It's a shelter. It's supposed to be temporary - just come in and out as you need a shelter. We have the modular housing units, we have the tent encampment on Geary Street, and we have so many more people. This number of people who will be accommodated, it won't scratch the surface. This undetermined-location shelter in HRM - I think the word was Halifax. What's that going to do for folks on the Dartmouth side? Between Dartmouth North and Dartmouth South, we have hundreds of people sleeping rough. Where are they going to go? We have no idea.

These announcements are all a step in the right direction. We need more shelter beds, but we need more housing. We've had a long time to figure out what that housing is going to look like, and the only conclusion that we can come to is that the government doesn't understand the magnitude of this problem. So we are taking this opportunity to impress upon them the magnitude of this problem. People living in tents are working full-time. They are attached to the labour force - not all of them, but some of them. Some of them were driven to homelessness by the shockingly insufficient income assistance rates, which have been frozen in the face of record inflation.

The provincial government is responsible for housing. They are not responsible for paving the way for developers to do things that enrich them. Developers build. We need that. It's great. We need to expedite planning rules, and that's great, but to solve the housing crisis - to solve the number of people living in tents, to solve the fact that our shelters are full - we need affordable housing. That is non-market housing. That housing is built by non-profits and co-ops. Public housing: 222 units is great. Again, that's in the context of a wait-list of thousands and thousands of people who are waiting years and years.

I hope that there is an affordable housing plan that's like Part 2 of the housing plan that we just haven't seen yet. We will welcome it, but as it stands, we know that we need at least 70,000 units of housing by 2030. We know that more than 30,000 of those need to be affordable, and we don't see anything that takes us even close. We have been fighting for more and better housing for years. We would say this in the Chamber five years ago, and the government of the day would roll their eyes: Oh, there's the NDP talking about housing again - and here we are. We are in a full-blown housing crisis, and we will continue to say the same thing: everyone deserves a roof over their head.

We have responsibility for housing. It is our job to ensure that every person in this province is sheltered this Winter, and that everyone has access to a home that they can afford.

We look forward to the government letting us know how that's going to happen.