Why having certain parks for unhoused people in Halifax ‘misses the point,’ expert says
“. . .
The city has long maintained that housing is a provincial responsibility, but a member of the legislature said the province has also failed to address the housing crisis.
“I think that the housing crisis has not been far from my mind for the last several years, and especially coming out of a legislative session where we really expected to see meaningful action based on what the government had been telling us, and they did not,” said Claudia Chender, the NDP MLA for Dartmouth South.
“I wasn’t surprised that the tensions continue to be high, and the number of people sleeping rough continues to grow.”
She said the party recently introduced legislation calling housing a human right, but it was voted down by the Progressive Conservative government.
There has been some investment in housing supply, she said, but very little at the “bottom end.”
“We haven’t built any public housing in this city in decades,” Chender said. “So whether or not that happens again, it’s incumbent upon the province to look at the fact that our affordable housing supply is non-existent. And I’m talking about real affordable housing, so, 30 per cent of someone’s income.”
She said the first step should be to create emergency infrastructure to get people off the street, and then focus on transitional and permanent housing where they can stay.
Chender, whose constituency includes the Starr Park area, said the best people to address the housing crisis are the regional housing authorities, but “those people are falling down.”
“They’re not being funded properly to do the work they need to do, and so therefore people step into the gaps, I think, with very good intentions,” she said.
“But without a concerted effort, and without the resources, and the trust, and the ability to create stable housing, any solution is going to be imperfect.”
The province should be looking at “innovative options,” she said, such as right of first refusal, which would allow the province to get first dibs on properties that go up for sale. The province could then turn it into affordable housing.
Chender said there are currently five multi-residential buildings up for sale in her district that the province could look at buying.
“The likelihood of those being long-term, affordable rentals after they’re sold for a million dollars, or whatever they’re going to be sold for in this market, is very slim,” she said.
“There are lots of ways that they could preserve housing stock, they could expand housing stock … There are lots of opportunities, and it’s not an issue of if it’s possible, it’s an issue of political will.
“I’m not saying it’s not complicated. It’s obviously very complex and it’s very challenging, but we just need more action and we need to see it faster.”
. . .”