Experts, stakeholders give N.S. mixed grades for handling of housing crisis in 2023

The signs are impossible to ignore: online pleas for rentals,sparse shelves at food banks, tents crammed on public squares.

In 2023, rents in Nova Scotia rose faster than anywhere in Canada, vacancy rates remained low and homelessness ballooned. Housing was the biggest story of the year.

"We're all one paycheque or one crisis away from being homeless ourselves," said Allison Rouillard in November, discussing her eviction and subsequent decision to move into an RV even as winter approached.

While the housing crisis is a national problem decades in the making, it is particularly acute in Nova Scotia, which is now short tens of thousands of homes.

To help make sense of this massive issue, we asked experts and stakeholders to reflect on the past year and share their thoughts on how we got here and how we can fix it.

Looking back at Nova Scotia's dire housing situation

9 months ago

Duration 10:41

The CBC's Shaina Luck and Nicola Seguin look back at Nova Scotia's housing situation over the past year, and speak to experts and industry stakeholders about how we did and where we go from here.

Tenants vs. landlords

Nova Scotians began 2023 believing the province's temporary rent cap would end on Dec. 31. Tenant groups and Halifax's director of housing and homelessness warned if it was lifted, homelessness numbers could explode. But many landlords said they were struggling to turn a profit in the face of rising costs.

Colton LeBlanc, the minister in charge of residential tenancies, announced in March that the rent cap would be extended until the end of 2025, although it would rise to five per cent in 2024.

But still, the average rent on apartment listings in the province rose by 13.6 per cent to $2,097 in October compared to a year earlier, according to data from consulting firm Urbanation and Rentals.ca.

Mark Culligan, a community legal worker with Dalhousie Legal Aid in Halifax, said new tenants face skyrocketing rents as landlords aim to recoup money they lose on their rent-controlled units.

Culligan told CBC in a year-end interview he worries the rent cap will be blamed, and dropped instead of fixed.

"The province really needs to introduce some measures to allow landlords, if they have legitimate expenses, to pass those costs on to existing tenants so that new tenants are not left bearing the brunt of increased expenses," he said.

Culligan also pointed to the proliferation of fixed-term leases as a key problem in 2023, given the province's refusal to regulate their use.

Tenants and landlords were also waiting for the creation of an enforcement unit to regulate rental disputes, after that idea was included as a recommendation in a consultant's report commissioned by the province. But in October, the government announced it would not be happening in 2023.

Kevin Russell, executive director of the Investment Property Owners Association of Nova Scotia, said this is one reason it would be tough to give the province a passing grade.

"There's no enforcement from the residential tenancies level and there's no enforcement from the small claims court level," Russell said. "You can go through the whole process of nine months, come out on the other end with a decision in your favour, with no way to collect any restitution and that's simply unfair."

For thousands of low-income renters who turn to a provincial subsidy known as the rent supplement, 2023 brought an unwelcome change.

The province quietly tightened eliegbility requirements for the program in January so that only those spending more than 50 per cent of their pre-tax income on housing qualify, up from 30 per cent previously.

Hundreds of people were disqualified from the program as a result. Many in the housing sector condemned the move, and housing support worker Leigh MacLean told CBC News it was "drastic and secretive" when the change was uncovered in April.

Homelessness on the rise

By the end of the year, there were more than 1,000 people listed as "actively homeless" in Halifax a record high and more than three times what it was in 2020.

The province announced last spring that it had signed a deal worth $10 million to lease all 190 rooms inside the DoubleTree by Hilton hotel in Dartmouth, N.S., to provide shelter and medical support for those experiencing homelessness.

It also funds more than 400 shelter beds across the province, around 300 of which are in Halifax Regional Municipality.

Despite such measures, more tents appeared in parks, ball diamonds and along roads.

"I think we got a failing grade right now," said Lucas Goltz, program co-ordinator for the Navigator Outreach Program in Halifax. "Our shelters are completely full at this moment."

In October, the province announced millions in additional funding to help: more than $10 million to set up 52 tiny homes in Lower Sackville; $7.5 million to buy 200 temporary shelters that will be distributed around the province; and a new 24/7 emergency shelter in Dartmouth that will stay open for at least two and a half years.

But some of these projects have been delayed and there is still no timeline for when they'll happen.

"We just want the city and the province to step up now and stick by their word and actually start giving us some dates and timelines for this Pallet housing and the tiny home start," Matt Taylor, the founder of a non-profit group called the Gated Community Association, told CBC News in November. "It's just inhumane."

Growing numbers of Nova Scotians are also taking matters into their own hands some have even bought and pitched ice fishing tents for people sleeping in the cold.

But advocates say charity is no substitute for societal change.

"Obviously we are in a housing crisis right now," Goltz said. "But we need leaders who are going to think for the present and problem-solve our way out of crisis."

Market housing at a premium

The vast majority of Nova Scotians live in "market" housing, meaning it's priced according to the open market, and 2023 was the year it started to dominate the public discourse.

Both rent and house prices have risen steadily, and this summer it was reported that almost 10 per cent of the single-family homes listed for sale in Halifax were priced at $1 million or more.

"What was probably the biggest change, I think, has been sort of the political discussion or attention that's been now focused on the issue," said Neil Lovitt, vice-president of planning at Turner Drake & Partners, a real estate consultancy.

In a bid to contain historically high inflation, the Bank of Canada raise its benchmark interest rate to five per cent in July and it has remained there since.

In September, the federal government started taking steps to boost the housing supply, removing the GST on new rental construction, and Nova Scotia followed suit.

After some back and forth with the federal government, Halifax became one of the first cities to get millions of dollars from the federal government's Housing Accelerator Fund in October.

Halifax regional council also made moves to free up housing and facilitate construction by restricting short-term-rentals and agreeing to sell off surplus land for affordable housing.

The provincial government also released a five-year plan in October that it hopes will stimulate construction of more than 40,000 homes. It said the plan represents more than $1 billion in provincial spending, but critics said it failed students and low-income renters.

Meanwhile, developers have faced high interest rates that have made the loans that finance construction more expensive, said Stephen Adams, executive director at the Urban Development Institute of Nova Scotia. That has prompted some to put their money in investments other than housing.

"They're at that point where, you know, 'do we go or don't we,'" Adams said. "One of the options is park their money in a GIC with 5.3 per cent and wait it out."

Government subsidies may not be enough to change that calculation, particularly for affordable housing, he said.

Lovitt said governments have responded to the housing crisis with small tweaks so far, but he doesn't believe that's enough. Society-wide changes are needed, he said.

"What we do and the new things we put in place to respond to this is an opportunity to define Canadian society in the future, for the better or possibly for the worse."

Reinvestment in non-market housing

For the first time in 30 years, the Nova Scotia government said it was planning to build more public housing. The announcement in September included a commitment of $83 million over five years to create 222 rent-geared-to-income units.

With thousands of households on the growing waiting list, there were immediate calls to do more.

But the Housing Department hasn't said whether more units are coming, and experts say that's what they'll be watching for in the coming year.

"The one way you can continue to make sure there's affordable housing is by building, and creating policy that encourages non-market, deeply affordable housing," said Kristen Desjarlais-deKlerk, an assistantprofessor at Cape Breton University whose research focuses on affordable housing.

The Housing Department leaned into its land-for-housing project in 2023, providing property to non-profits and private developers to create more than 50 new affordable units across the province.

Large non-profit organizations like the Affordable Housing Association of Nova Scotia and Adsum for Women and Children saw the first tenants move into new non-market affordable housing developments this year. And more are in the works, thanks to provincial and federal money and private fundraising.

There are roughly 3,000 non-market housing units in the province. While that's a tiny fraction of all homes, they make a huge difference to their tenants.

"This place basically saved my life," Darren Surette, who lives in non-profit housing in Dartmouth, told CBC News in September.

Where do we go from here?

While the housing crisis has accelerated over the past year, its roots stretch back much further than 2023.

"When the federal government stepped out of housing in the '90s, I think that's where our current housing crisis across this country actually really started," Desjarlais-deKlerk said.

Housing is technically a provincial responsibility, but different levels of government have often butted heads on the issue. Experts say fixing it will take co-operation from all levels of governments as well as the private sector.

And the next year will be pivotal in determining how we respond.