There is a severe housing crisis in Halifax and many other Nova Scotia towns. As in most any crisis, it’s painful for everybody, but the very poor, and especially also the racialized poor, are bearing the brunt. However, when you listen to Housing Nova Scotia senior bureaucrats at yesterday’s Community Services Standing Committee you do not get a sense of urgency.
In the aftermath of the Northern Pulp decision there are a lot of racist social media comments directed at the people of Pictou Landing First Nation (PLFN). To see racist comments on Facebook is of course not unusual, but this is getting out of hand. If we don’t push back it will continue to get worse.
“The current government adopted the Roadmap Report and a 10-year time frame for significantly increasing community-based supported living options while decreasing reliance on large institutions. So far, however, the allocation of resources from government needed to create community capacity has been woefully inadequate. Wait lists for services continue to grow – from 1100 in 2015 to 1300 in 2017 to nearly 1500 last year. This is because the badly needed investments by government have not been forthcoming.”
Racist street checks may have stopped, but overbearing police interactions with Black Haligonians continue.
It’s time to push back a bit on the many op eds and letters elsewhere calling for Uber to come to Halifax. It’s not all good, certainly not for the workers, A survey shows gig workers are lonely, unhappy and feel they have very little control over their lives.
Fairly often poor people in Halifax get stopped by police and private security guards for involuntary behaviour such as fidgeting and staring at people, behaving as if intoxicated, and talking to themselves in public. In a follow up on earlier stories Kendall Worth spoke with people who submitted formal complaints with police, mall management and even the Human Rights commission.
“No one should be homeless in our city, but because of greed and those who get to call the shots in Province House and our city, and with our tax dollars, the unfortunate are left to suffer.”
This weekend’s weekend video features Toronto activist and singer Faith Nolan, with a rousing song about Viola Desmond. I found out about Faith’s connections with Nova Scotia while reading Before the Parade, a great book by Rebecca Rose about LGBTQ activism in Halifax in the seventies and early eighties. Watch the video and buy the book!
When it comes to homelessness and a lack of affordable housing Halifax is not much better off than larger cities like Toronto and Vancouver. John Clarke draws on his long experience as a poverty and housing activist in Ontario to consider what avenues of direct action will allow us to make real gains.
Food banks are a wonderful institution, and in these times of austerity-induced suffering they need our full support. That said, food banks are not very efficient in getting food to hungry families. “We found that most food-insecure households delayed bill payments and sought financial help from friends and family, but only 21.1% used food banks,” the authors of a recent study state.