Housing: a basic human right

It seems to me that the creation of affordable housing, which is much in the news of late, works best bottom up. Like up in the Municipality of the County of Antigonish where the Antigonish Affordable Housing Society (AAHS) is doing great work.

The push for more affordable housing opportunities was aided last year when the county unanimously voted to transfer land for the construction of a 15-unit complex. And it kicked in $100,000 over five years.

“We thought it was the right thing to do,” Warden Owen McCarron said of the decision due to the success of the Riverside Estates' housing complex.

Back when our Kentville newsroom offices were down the hall from Kings County Housing Repair Society headquarters, I got a good grounding in the need for affordable housing. It is crucial for so many.

For 25 years prior to federal finance minister Paul Martin's 1995 decision to axe funds for housing support, community groups made such a difference. The initial history is documented in a little book called ‘Visible Faith' by Doug Hergett.

Volunteers Pat O'Meara and Morris Lovesey went out and surveyed sub-standard housing and were “absolutely appalled at what they had found.”

Low interest loans for repairs were the first initiative, then applications were made for seniors' apartment units.

The society polished the unique ‘Hearth Home' program and built ‘Cluster Units.' So two National

Film Board documentaries were made by Hubert Schuurman. The Ballad of South Mountain is a tale of poverty and hope.

There was much sadness when the society found itself with too little funding to operate. The housing units were turned over to the province to operate and there was virtually no local input. A long silence ensued and a couple of Habitat for Humanity builds were administered elsewhere.

Then I remember in 2016 the federal and provincial governments proposed a partnership with the private sector to make “significant investments in affordable housing across Nova Scotia.”

Much of the $21.4 million that was announced was meant to be used to address increasing demands for repairs to social housing units and to improve energy and water efficiency. I interviewed several mothers living in provincial units a year later — one laughed bitterly and said of her living conditions, “it's too easy. Out of sight, out of mind. Some days I want to sit and cry from the stigma of it.”

Urban centres, like Toronto, have created inclusionary zoning policies to try and fix the lack of affordable housing by mandating a certain percentage of affordable housing in new developments near transportation. The policy is popular in the United States, but what else could boost such units?

NDP MLA Lisa Roberts thinks all levels of government need to work together to take meaningful action on the housing crisis here.

Recently the province's affordable housing commission released a report with 17 recommendation and a timeline. In response, Premier Iain Rankin said he wants to make sure the $25 million the commission called for fits within Nova Scotia's fiscal plan before signing off on any spending.

It sounded like waffling to me when Rankin told reporters, "I do think we need to invest. I'm not sure if that's the right number and what impact it has to the fiscal plan. That is part of a suite of recommendations."

According to the commission, that money would help 600 to 900 households most desperately in need of secure, safe places to live.

Meanwhile a new report by the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives says we need a major push to create publicly funded, non-profit housing to make up for over 25 years of lost ground. The centre says 30,475 Nova Scotian households are located in unaffordable housing, which is defined as costing more than 30 per cent of income.

"When the federal government largely abandoned the field of supported housing, social housing, and affordable housing in the 1990s, Nova Scotia was not prepared to fill the gap. And Nova Scotia did not fill the gap," the report says.

Some 95 recommendations include a call for the province to build or acquire more than 33,000 affordable, non-profit and co-operative housing units over a decade, "enough for all those in core housing need and who are homeless."

The province has been challenged to shore up rent controls and to better enforce existing rules around excessive rent hikes and evictions. There is a documented lack of housing options in rural communities, as many units are now short-term tourism focused.

The authors urge Nova Scotia to take advantage of new federal affordable housing initiatives as part of pandemic recovery, saying "the matter is extremely time sensitive."

Accessing federal funding to empower community groups to develop affordable, accessible housing will put the power to build and maintain cooperative housing into the hands of community. Surely that is what's needed most.