Hailie Tattrie: “However, I am here to remind all you that we are each closer to houselessness than we may think. One accident, one health issue, one missed paycheque, could land many of us out on the streets.”
The inaccessibility of housing options is a key factor preventing women from leaving abusive relationships, and in many cases contributes to their choice to return to their abusers after they have left.
Renters looking unsuccessfully for a place to live in Nova Scotia may have more to blame than just bad luck and a lack of affordable housing. Members of Nova Scotia ACORN have found that there are at least two “bad tenants” blacklists maintained by landlords in Nova Scotia.
Danny Cavanagh: Imagine that you’re paying rent and you have been told you need to move out because the place will be renovated. You go to the bank to see about buying a home. The bank says no to a mortgage even though the rent payment is higher than a mortgage payment. This is happening far too often.
With affordable housing at such a premium everywhere in Nova Scotia people are pointing at vacant lots and empty buildings in towns and cities all across Nova Scotia and wondering why we can’t do better. Now there is a mapping application, This should be housing, that exposes the extent of these opportunities.
Jen Powley responds to Waye Mason’s op-ed in the Chronicle Herald earlier this month. “While Mason argues that the province needs to build more affordable units, he and his municipal colleagues keep selling off land on the peninsula that could have been a home for affordable housing.”
A group of ten community organizations and members are calling on the Halifax Regional Municipality to abandon its plan to remove temporary shelters from public property today, on July 13, 2021. Whatever its public justifications, what is happening is that the city is reacting to those who view the shelters as eye sores and their residents as bad for business and property values.
Judie Haiven looks at two pre-election goodies coming our way compliments of the provincial government, money for long term care and affordable housing.
Economist James Sawler on the report by the Nova Scotia Affordable Housing Commission. “Affordable housing is crucial infrastructure, and since its benefits accrue not just to individual households but across our entire society (bestowing what economists call positive externalities), like most infrastructure, it should be financed publicly.”
Inclusionary zoning allows a municipality to mandate a certain percentage of affordable housing in new developments. With an affordable housing crisis growing more urgent by the day, why don’t we use this tool in Nova Scotia? Stephen Wentzell investigates.