Chender proposes measures to help with housing crisis
Nova Scotia NDP Leader Claudia Chender took swipes at the governing PC Party during her address to delegates at the NDP’S biennial policy convention in Halifax Saturday while announcing new party initiatives that would help deal with the housing crisis.
“We need housing, tons of housing,” Chender said.
“Part of the answer is to expedite the building of the unprecedented number of homes required for our growing province, and we need to ensure that every Nova Scotian can afford to buy or rent those homes. And we need to keep people in the homes they have now without the risk of eviction.”
Lack of housing affects people’s health and finances, Chender said, adding that it also impacts how the province grows, whether young Nova Scotians stay, and whether older residents can afford to retire or if they have to go back to work to pay for rent.
“We can begin to address so many of the housing problems by dealing with the crisis headon,” she said.
Her plan has three components: support the non-market housing sector to leverage federal funding by prioritizing the use of prefabricated or modular construction and enable the rapid expansion of non-profit and co-op housing projects in the province
increase the current down payment assistance program from five per cent to 10 per cent of the purchase price up to $50,000 while extending the repayment period from 10 to 25 years
establish rent control and create a renters’ tax credit for low and middle-income households to help offset the rising costs of rent.
“We can do this,” Chender told delegates. “People should be able to purchase homes.”
With only a little over a year until the next provincial election, Chender said the party will be focusing on the affordability crisis, but also health care and climate change.
“The premier says that we are getting more health care, faster. There are 100s of seniors in this province in hospitals waiting for long-term care who would certainly say
otherwise,” she said.
Chender also criticized Houston for abandoning the Coastal Protection Act.
After the speech, she said the party’s proposed housing solutions are relatively simple ways to help address the problem.
“We have put forward a number of housing proposals (in the past), all of which we keep fighting for,” she said. “But the ones we put forward today are really designed to ensure that we are building the number of homes needed by our growing population… So far what we have seen (from government) are tax breaks for developers and zoning changes. Those are probably needed, but as a result, we’re building a lot of homes and a lot of people still can’t afford them.”
She said pre-fabricated building techniques tend to be greener and more affordable.”
Rent control, not a rent cap is what is needed to assist people, Chender said.
“It’s clumsy, it doesn’t work, and that’s why with a fiveper-cent cap last year rents went up 14 per cent.”