Media release: At a time when we need to stay home from all but the most essential activities, evictions become a public health issue. During the provincial state of emergency, no tenants should be evicted. You can’t stay home if you don’t have a home to stay in.
Today Kelly Regan, Minister of Community Services, joined the daily COVID-19 government press conference to discuss what her department is doing to help income assistance recipients and other low income people. Not very much at all, it turns out.
Gary Aitchison has a new bedbug-free place to live! After Judy Haiven and the NS Advocate exposed how a senior was forced to flee his bug-infested apartment all of a sudden the Metropolitan Regional Housing Authority found him a new place. Too bad it took seven years.
Economists Michael Bradfield and James Sawler make the case for doing away with property taxes and replacing it with something more fair to everybody.
Thoughtful presentation by Larry Haiven to an all-party committee reviewing a proposal to eliminate capped property assessments in Nova Scotia. “Our fear is that, allowed to run free, tax assessment based on the vagaries of the market could seriously damage a wonderful, diverse and still-affordable neighbourhood,” said Haiven.
Judy Haiven writes about a senior citizen who is camping out in a Halifax hotel because his public housing apartment at the Gordon B. Isnor Manor is infested with bedbugs.
Reporter Kendall Worth offers a reminder that high rents and rent increases are forcing poor people to make risky choices that they aren’t really comfortable with. In this case things seem to work out, but that isn’t always the case.
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.
“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.”
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.