Emergency Response to Housing Need

The current economic situation and the rapid increase of population, particularly in HRM, has aggravated an already existing emergency situation that needs action to provide “deeply affordable” housing in Nova Scotia. Some recent views have been expressed on the immediate action required.

The new building is for the market... not the people in tents in the ballpark

Dr. Catherine Leviten-Reid is a CCPA-NS Research Associate writes in The Monitor.

A short-sighted vision that relies primarily on the market to ensure everyone has access to housing underestimates this issue's tremendous rippling impact, which erodes efforts to build a healthy, growing, more inclusive province. (Leviten-Reid, 2023)

Alex Cooke reports for Global News on differing viewpoints about social housing.

Jeff Karabanow, a professor at Dalhousie University and the co-director of Dal’s Social Work Community Clinic, says the province’s housing crisis has been happening for years, and is the result of disinvestment in social housing. (Cooke, 2023)

Municipal Affairs and Housing Minister John Lohr said in recent years, their efforts have touched about a thousand non-profit and co-op housing units through programs such as Compass, the Housing Trust of Nova Scotia, and the Land for Housing Initiative.

He couldn’t say how many of those units were rent-geared-to-income but said they were a mix of different options with more affordable rates.

In terms of “affordable” units going for 80 per cent of market value – a figure typically touted on housing announcements in Nova Scotia – Lohr said it “doesn’t work for some people, but for those it works for, it’s incredibly important.” (Cooke, 2023)

Halifax Councillor Waye Mason has expressed that in this time of likely global housing price collapse, high interest rates, and recession we are in need of the government to help preserve our labour force by funding affordable housing construction.

Finally and most importantly, you are responsible for affordable housing construction in Nova Scotia.  In the election, Premier Houston promised to deliver the Affordable Housing Commission report.  That report talks extensively about the need for social or below-market housing.   I say again to you Minister, the market will not produce below-market housing.

You need to have a massive plan to build affordable housing, and you needed it a year ago.  With the coming global housing price collapse, high-interest rates and recession, there has never been a better time for the government to help preserve our labour force by funding affordable housing construction. (Mason, 2022)

In A Good War, author and activist Seth Klein looks at the Second World War strategies and shows how they can be repurposed today for a rapid transition.

Addressing the need for adequate housing in Canada would seem to be connected to the difficulty of life in our winter without appropriate shelter. Housing insecurity creates particularly intense anxiety in our land of ice and snow. Immediate action on a large scale to mitigate this disastrous situation is appropriate for the government. 

References

Cooke, A. (2023, June 26). Nova Scotia hasn't built public housing in 30 years. Why that was a 'huge mistake' | Globalnews.ca. Global News. Retrieved June 26, 2023, from https://globalnews.ca/news/9784037/ns-public-housing-stagnant-supply/ 

Klein, S. (2020). A Good War: Mobilizing Canada for the Climate Emergency. ECW Press.

Leviten-Reid, C. (2023, June 26). Lack of affordable housing in Nova Scotia requires urgent action. The Monitor. Retrieved June 26, 2023, from https://monitormag.ca/articles/lack-of-affordable-housing-in-nova-scotia-requires-urgent-action/ 

Mason, W. (2022, November 15). Correspondence from Councillor Mason to Minister Lohr Regarding Housing. Waye Mason, Councillor. Retrieved November 15, 2022, from https://wayemason.ca/2022/11/15/correspondence-from-councillor-mason-to-minister-lohr-regarding-housing/ 

Housing and Ideology

Political ideology may motivate involvement in the process of developing policy and electing legislators. It may be a serious obstacle to effective action particularly in the areas of housing, health care, and response to the climate crisis.

Signs of Crisis in HRM

Halifax Councillor Waye Mason has expressed that in this time of likely global housing price collapse, high interest rates, and recession we are in need of the government to help preserve our labour force by funding affordable housing construction. His concerns have been expressed in a letter to Nova Scotia Municipal Affairs and Housing Minister, John Lohr.

Finally and most importantly, you are responsible for affordable housing construction in Nova Scotia.  In the election, Premier Houston promised to deliver the Affordable Housing Commission report.  That report talks extensively about the need for social or below-market housing.   I say again to you Minister, the market will not produce below-market housing.

You need to have a massive plan to build affordable housing, and you needed it a year ago.  With the coming global housing price collapse, high-interest rates and recession, there has never been a better time for the government to help preserve our labour force by funding affordable housing construction. (Mason, 2022)

Dr. Catherine Leviten-Reid, a CCPA-NS Research Associate and an Associate Professor in the MBA in Community Economic Development program at Cape Breton University, reports that Nova Scotians urgently need the government to do more to address our province's lack of affordable housing.

Housing is a Human Right

Based on the last census, at least 48,000 renters in Nova Scotians reported paying at least 30 per cent of their income on shelter, leaving them vulnerable to losing their housing. That represents 35 per cent of tenants. That number is likely higher today.

The chronic lack of affordable units results in constrained choices for tenants or no choice at all. Responding to the chronic shortage of affordable housing primarily through rent supplements will not succeed without substantial investment in supply-side responses that generate affordable rentals. Beyond low vacancies, we know tenants face discrimination based on income source, interactions with the justice system, family type, and ethnicity, among other characteristics, again highlighting the need for greater tenant protection.

Changes to rent supplement design and the rental market are needed, as is a massive investment in public and nonprofit and cooperative rental housing stock. This investment must include scaling up the protection of existing affordable units by purchasing rental buildings for sale and facilitating ownership by non-market providers. The status quo level of investment is unacceptable, with more Nova Scotians finding themselves without a secure roof over their heads. (Leviten-Reid, 2023)

During the Second World War, Canadians and their government completely remade the economy -- retooling factories, transforming the workforce, and creating common cause among Canadians for the war effort. In A Good War, author and activist Seth Klein looks at the Second World War strategies and shows how they can be repurposed today for a rapid transition.

Housing in HRM from WWII

Canada Lands acquired approximately 34 hectares (86 acres) of the former military site at Shannon Park, Dartmouth in 2014 from the Department of National Defence (DND).

Deeply Affordable Housing Potential Site

The property includes a French immersion school. Large portions of the site have significant water frontage and offer a large, relatively flat area suitable for development. Steeper areas around the edge of the site offer views of the harbour.

Canada Lands undertook an extensive public engagement process, which resulted in the preparation of a preferred development plan in 2016. More recently, Halifax Regional Municipality (HRM) sought community feedback to finalize the plan and prepare a development agreement. The plan has been evolving during the HRM planning and consultative process, with a focus on creating a community that provides opportunities for mixed use development. Although the majority of the plan will be focused on residential development, commercial and supporting professional services will be integrated. The final designs will ensure a mix of housing types and support public open space. The flow of the community will ensure pedestrian linkage throughout with strong connectivity to the future shoreline park. The development of the future parks will provide both active and passive green spaces. Public transit is also an integral part and consideration throughout. (Shannon Park, n.d.)

A short-sighted vision that relies primarily on the market to ensure everyone has access to housing underestimates this issue's tremendous rippling impact, which erodes efforts to build a healthy, growing, more inclusive province.

References

Klein, S. (2020). A Good War: Mobilizing Canada for the Climate Emergency. ECW Press.

Leviten-Reid, C. (2023, June 26). Lack of affordable housing in Nova Scotia requires urgent action. The Monitor. Retrieved June 26, 2023, from https://monitormag.ca/articles/lack-of-affordable-housing-in-nova-scotia-requires-urgent-action/

Mason, W. (2022, November 15). Correspondence from Councillor Mason to Minister Lohr Regarding Housing. Waye Mason, Councillor. Retrieved November 15, 2022, from https://wayemason.ca/2022/11/15/correspondence-from-councillor-mason-to-minister-lohr-regarding-housing/ 

Shannon Park. (n.d.). Canada Lands Company. Retrieved June 26, 2023, from https://www.clc-sic.ca/real-estate/shannon-park 

Affordable Housing Crisis and the Election

The need for affordable housing in Canada has reached a crisis level. The plans of the political parties seeking election in September contain incentives, regulations and restrictions to hopefully increase the supply of affordable and deeply affordable housing.

Balance to create affordable housing

 

CBC The Current asks two nonpartisan experts what the parties are promising on affordable housing ahead of election day. Leilani Farha, former U.N. Special Rapporteur on the right to housing, now the global director of the Shift, an organisation that's focussed on that issue, speaking on CBC the Current, thinks the parties need to get their head around addressing homelessness. It has to be urgent and a priority. These are life and death situations.

 

These are situations that are desperate and need to be addressed. She thinks we definitely need more supply in the country. That's a given, but it's what kind of supply. It is necessary to encourage supply, but encourage affordable and deeply affordable supply. She thinks that has to be a priority. Housing is understood as a human right, and there are a lot of people who are not at all enjoying that right in any way in this country.1

 Murtaza Haider, professor of data science and real estate management at Ryerson University and research director of the Urban Analytics Institute, thinks homelessness is a thing that he was expecting a little more on because he saw some mention of it in each platform. 

Conservatives and NDP call it a crisis. They have put forward plans to increase the supply of new housing or new construction. They have to put measures to help new home buyers, especially First-Time Homebuyers or the Millennials, to purchase more homes. There's some programmes to increase the construction of new rental housing. But if you put all of these together, these programmes are not aggressive enough to address the almost five decades of under-construction that we have built fewer homes than we were building in the 70s on a per capita basis in Canada, which has created this state where housing is unaffordable for many people, both renting and buying.1

Natasha Bulowski comments that the sad truth is, Canada’s housing affordability crisis has been 30 years in the making. In a nation where housing needs drastically outstrip availability in most cities, and where the private sector is unwilling or unable to build more truly affordable units, could the COVID-19 pandemic offer a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to embrace new policies and new partnerships with the non-profit housing sector? Could we not use this moment to fix Canada’s housing crisis for good times and bad?

“The private sector is not going to get us out of our housing emergency,” said Ottawa-Centre Councilor Catherine McKenney when I spoke to her in March. “When we talk about affordable housing, supportive housing, social housing, we can’t look at a profit margin. We have to look at a health, social service margin. We have to make sure people are well taken care of and once you put profit into that you will lose that.” Not only must cities figure out ways to prevent the erosion of existing housing stock—“so that we aren’t losing that affordable stock as property owners and landlords renovate and push out tenants,” said McKenney—but also how to drastically increase the construction of new affordable rental units, preferably by public or non-profit actors and in combination with provincial and federal rental assistance programs, so that people can afford to pay for their homes.2

John Rapley, a political economist at the University of Cambridge, speaking on CBC Cross Country Checkup, notes that Canadians value the gains they've made from a soaring housing market. While he welcomes plans to create more housing stock, Rapley warns that new developments will likely face opposition. Communities may push back against plans to increase a neighbourhood's density, which could cause projects to move to lower-income areas or the outskirts of cities, adding to urban sprawl. He believes it won't be up to governments to decide how to move forward, but rather what Canadian homeowners will allow them to do.

"You can't actually just say we'll build cheap houses here and [have] all the other houses keep their same value. Once you add supply to the market, the price and everything comes down, and that's not popular."3

Canada's major federal parties have shared their visions for making housing accessible, offering up ideas from restrictions on foreign buyers to building more housing.3

With many prospective homebuyers feeling squeezed out of the market, and others struggling to find reasonably priced rent in cities across the country, housing affordability has emerged as a key issue for voters ahead of the Sept. 20 election.

 

References

1	(n.d.). The Current with Matt Galloway | Live Radio | CBC Listen. Retrieved August 31, 2021, from https://www.cbc.ca/listen/live-radio/1-63-the-current/clip/15863238-what-parties-promising-affordable-housing-ahead-election-day
2	(2020, May 1). Our opportunity to end housing poverty - | Canadian Centre for .... Retrieved August 31, 2021, from https://www.policyalternatives.ca/publications/monitor/our-opportunity-end-housing-poverty
3	(2021, August 29). Measures to make housing more affordable wouldn't be popular with .... Retrieved August 31, 2021, from https://www.cbc.ca/radio/checkup/how-affordable-is-your-housing-situation-right-now-1.6155647/measures-to-make-housing-more-affordable-wouldn-t-be-popular-with-voters-economist-1.6155683