A small ACORN Nova Scotia rally and press conference in downtown Halifax served to remind the three Liberal MLAs running to become the new premier of Nova Scotia that as far as low income Nova Scotians are concerned the current premier left the province in a terrible mess.
A grim story with a happy ending. Gary Aitchison, the senior who lived for years in an apartment riddled with bedbugs and cockroaches, is thankful for the support of all those NS Advocate readers who wrote him letters of encouragement, and to those who donated to help him 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.
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.
Kendall Worth with a follow up on an earlier story about a family pushed out of their home and the neighborhood they love because of a huge rent increase.
Roving reporter and anti-poverty advocate Jodi Brown meets up with Crystal, a public housing tenant in Halifax who has a sad and way too common story to tell about public housing waiting lists.
More about widespread heating issues at Greystone Drive public housing units in Spryfield, and the Housing Authority’s apparent inability to fix it once and for all. “Maybe nobody cares because we are not as well off as everybody else. That’s almost how I feel,” one of the affected tenants says.
It took contractors working for the Metropolitan Regional Housing Authority 36 hours to restore heat in a 6-unit building in the Greystone Drive area in Spryfield. The Housing Authority blames the high winds of the January “weather bomb” for causing the furnace problems. Problem with that response is that it wasn’t windy when the furnace died.
The state of public housing in Nova Scotia at times is terrible. There is no other way to describe it. Last week I drove to Sheet Harbour and met Brent and Donna, very nice people who deserve better than having to call and call again for somebody to deal with a backed up septic tank, or to have mould simply spray painted over. We hear these stories a lot, and we go check them out when we can.
It is terribly important that we support the few people in Nova Scotia who are on welfare and/or live in public housing who speak out publicly about the conditions they face, not only for what they have to tell us, but also for the simple act of saying it. They are examples and inspirations, what they do is crucial. Jodi Brown is one of these people, and this Weekend’s Video is about her unexpected encounter with both welfare and public housing. One day you have a job, then you get sick, next thing you have $56 grocery money for an entire month.