Low-income Nova Scotians face 'impossibly tough decisions' amid rising costs, says advocate

Dalhousie Legal Aid Service says systemic changes are needed to help low-income Nova Scotians weather rising rents and inflation.

Food Banks Canada released the 2022 Hunger Count Report on Thursday. It showed a 17 per cent increase in the number of visits to Nova Scotia food banks since 2019.

"Really what we're hearing is that people are just making impossibly tough decisions about how to use the limited income they have to pay for things that just keep increasing in cost," said Joanne Hussey, a community legal worker with Dal Legal Aid.

The national survey is broken down by province and showed 41 per cent of food bank visits in Nova Scotia are from people who get income from social assistance and 15.1 per cent are employed. The survey also showed 68.4 per cent of people using the food bank are renters.

Hussey said they're seeing people seeking help from Dal Legal Aid who previously never asked for help. 

"We're seeing a lot of seniors who are on fixed incomes who haven't seen increases in their in their pension incomes, but are seeing increases to their rent," Hussey said.

High demand on food banks

"We're seeing a lot of folks who are in the higher income groups that we work with that, again, wouldn't have had these issues previously."

Food bank Feed Nova Scotia is seeing the same thing. It released the results of its own public survey on food insecurity on Thursday. The goal of the survey was to find out what the public thinks about food insecurity, raise awareness and understand public support for policy changes.

"No matter how much people give, it will never be the answer. Charity isn't the path forward to address food insecurity in the long term," said Karen Theriault, director of development and communications at Feed Nova Scotia.

Feed Nova Scotia conducted a separate provincial survey on social media with 1,088 respondents answering 24 questions. It found most people thought the high cost of living and inadequate income were contributing to food insecurity.

"Feed Nova Scotia has been, for a long time, advocating for a change that tackles those root causes of food insecurity like so many others in the community have been pushing for," Theriault said. "But this recent public opinion survey found a significant amount of support from the public for these changes."

Hussey agrees there needs to be a change in policy.

Policy change proposal

"The issue is a political problem with a political solution, which is that people need more income. We need to see income assistance rates increase ... to be indexed to the cost of living like New Brunswick has done," Hussey said

"We need to see housing costs that are related to people's actual income. So not based on market measures, but are 30 per cent of people's income and no more."

Hussey said minimum wage needs to increase "because it's not keeping up with the costs."