Housing advocates say N.S. plan to renovate units won't help homeless people

The head of a non-profit group that advocates for "decent, affordable and sustainable housing" has told a legislature committee Nova Scotia's housing strategy will have no impact on those in need of affordable accommodations.

Jim Graham, executive director of the Affordable Housing Association of Nova Scotia, pulled no punches Tuesday as he weighed in on the strategy, the first phase of which was unveiled in September.

The government plans to focus on renovating and repairing low-income units, rather than building new homes. 

"It's taken 20 years or more to dig this hole," he said. "It's going to take 20 years or more to get out of it.... We need to think in those terms, not in three years."

Graham told the committee that as many as 40,000 Nova Scotian households were in desperate need of an affordable place to live.

The housing advocate was even more pointed when it came to why it was vital to provide those people with a proper place to live. 

"We live in a sub-Arctic climate. If you're not housed, you die," he told the committee. 

Graham didn't seem bothered by the fact he sat shoulder-to-shoulder with the senior government official in charge of the strategy when he offered his view on what the government announced last September.

The first three years of a 10-year funding agreement with Ottawa will focus on improving the 11,615 rent-assisted social housing units in the province, including those owned by the provincial government, co-operatives and units owned by non-profit agencies.

"The action plan is reinvesting in a 50-year-old program," he said. "It's reinvesting in a public housing stock that was designed to meet the needs of the 1960s and '70s.... We have moved past that. That program is not sustainable anymore." 

Graham also urged the government to provide public housing to people who are single but not yet considered seniors.

"There is no public housing stock for single people. It doesn't exist," he said. 

Hundreds registered as homeless

He said in Halifax there were at least 240 single people registered as homeless.

"They're in shelters, they're couch-surfing, they're sleeping in cars, they're rough-sleeping," he told the provincial politicians. "They are in places not meant for human habitation.

"If you're homeless long enough, you lose 25 years off your life."

He urged the province to rethink its policy for rent subsidies, complaining that only a "handful" of the hundreds of subsidies announced to date had been directed to those who were homeless.

Nancy MacLellan, deputy minister of Municipal Affairs and Housing, offered a different view on the government's plan, suggesting the extra money being invested as part of a federal-provincial initiative would have an impact on those in need.

"It is a deliberate and planned approach for us to focus on stabilizing and investing in refreshing our existing stock and being ready for growth into the future," she told committee members.

She also defended the focus, at least in the first phase, on renovations and retrofits.

"Many of the units are 40-years-plus-old and the building envelope needs that significant investment and stability in order for us to be able to maintain those units in good condition and that people have a safe and affordable place to live," she said.