Housing advocates press province for better data collection

Legal aid workers and researchers are calling on the province to collect and publicly release data related to the housing crisis.

Dalhousie Legal Aid Service and the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives say without ready access to statistics, the full scope of Nova Scotia's housing challenges — and possible solutions — is difficult to grasp.

Joanne Hussey, a community legal worker with Dalhousie Legal Aid Service, wants to see published statistics about evictions, including how many are taking place and demographic information about those affected, such as income, gender and family status.

"If you see a big change in a short period of time, then you have to ask other questions about what else is contributing to this," Hussey said. "Because presumably it's not all just due to … behaviour or actions of an individual tenant. It's a more systemic problem."

Hussey would also like to see information shared about residential tenancy hearings, including how many applications are filed for hearings, how many hearings take place, and the outcome of those processes.

"Without that information, it makes it very difficult for organizations like ours and certainly for the government itself to be able to say, 'Wait, this might not be working the way that we would like it to be.'"

Information gaps

The province doesn't collect some of the information Hussey says would be useful, such as the number of fixed-term leases being signed. Fixed-term leases end on a date agreed upon by the landlord and tenant, rather than automatically being renewed.

A growing number of tenants in the Halifax area have reported being priced out of their apartments by landlords using fixed-term leases to raise rents by increases far outstripping the current cap of two per cent.

Colton LeBlanc, the minister of Service Nova Scotia, which administers the residential tenancies program, told reporters last week the province doesn't track that level of detail, and although he's heard stories through the media of the inappropriate use of fixed-term leases, he stands by the intended use of them.

Hussey said the government should know whether the use of fixed-term leases has grown since the provincial rent cap was implemented.

"Not being able to say that seems like a bit of a gap in their information in terms of being able to make good policy or make good legislation," she said.

Some info available on request, province says

A spokesperson for Service Nova Scotia acknowledged data collection could be improved.

"We recognize there are gaps in the information we collect," said a statement from Rachel Boomer. "Fixing them requires IT upgrades and those are underway."

Boomer said the department is modernizing its system to allow it to collect more and better data on each residential tenancies hearing and its outcome, and that it expects the upgrades to be finished in two years.

The department currently collects data about the number and type of applications for residential tenancy hearings, as well as "high-level" information about the outcome of those hearings, such as whether an application is approved, dismissed, settled or withdrawn.

But that information is only available by request rather than routinely and publicly posted. Any information that could contain personal information is only released under the freedom-of-information process.

Asked whether Service Nova Scotia plans to proactively publish its data, Boomer said that hasn't yet been decided.

Non-profits collecting data

Hussey said she and others who work on issues related to housing and homelessness currently rely primarily on statistics gleaned by local non-profit organizations, such as those published by the Affordable Housing Association of Nova Scotia, or numbers published by Statistics Canada and the Canadian Mortgage and Housing Corporation, but Hussey said "provincially, we don't really see a lot."

Dalhousie Legal Aid Service itself has started tracking information from its clients about 10 months ago

"It provides us with a good snapshot of who is accessing our services and it allows us to be able to quantify some of the trends that we've known anecdotally were happening."

But even that has its limitations. The organization primarily serves the Halifax Regional Municipality, so it doesn't have a clear picture of what's happening across the entire province.

"That's a real significant gap and I think the government is in the best position to actually be collecting that information."