Housing and homelessness is one of the major issues facing HRM. Household budgets are being stretched as people are forced to spend more on rent. There is real anxiety out there too as many people know that, if they’re forced to move, they won’t be able to find a new apartment in their price range. And then there are the folks who have been completely failed by the system and are living outside. Some of the folks living rough have complex issues and require supportive services, but there are others whose only issue is poverty. Seniors on fixed incomes living in cars, construction workers who are building housing that they can’t afford by day and sleeping in a tent at night. There is a lot of complexity around housing and homelessness involving all orders of government and fixing it will require a lot of cooperation. As the Mayor has often said, the feds have the money, the province has the responsibility, and the city has the problems.
The housing crisis has been developing for decades and I don’t think we’re going to truly get out of it with just tinkering, we need to make some big moves and I’m proposing one: return responsibility for public housing to HRM.
Over the last few years, HRM has done a lot to try and lessen the severity of our housing crisis by taking steps to increase supply on the market side where we have the most control. HRM has relaxed zoning restrictions throughout the municipality, regulated short-term rentals, and shortened development timelines. All of that is good, but we need to recognize that market solutions will only get us so far. There are folks who will never, ever, find a home in the for-profit housing sector because the private sector can’t build something that they can afford.
Unfortunately, the non-market housing sector has been neglected by government for the last thirty years. Compared to other wealthy countries, Canada has very few social housing units relative to our population.
It wasn’t always this way. Prior to the 1990s Canada steadily built new social housing. That all stopped as federal and provincial governments cutback on spending to try and balance the budget and as the general idea that government shouldn’t build or operate anything took hold. As a result, Nova Scotia hasn’t built any new public housing units since 1995.
Although Nova Scotia stopped building non-market housing thirty years ago, the population of HRM kept on increasing, growing by almost 200,000 over the time period. We have essentially the same number of rent to income units as we did back in 1995 but we’re getting close to double the population. It’s no wonder that Metro Housing’s wait list has grown so significantly. The Auditor General’s 2021 report into Nova Scotia’s Housing Authorities found that, on average, people could expect to wait over two years to get into a housing unit that they qualify for and results are undoubtedly worse than that average in HRM. The AG report found that Metro Housing placed 336 people in 2021 and had a waitlist of 2,415. Housing 336 people a year would mean it would take seven years to house everyone on that list! This isn’t working. We need more off-market housing. Lots more.
To be fair to the Province, after first rejecting the idea of building any public housing, the Houston government changed course and partnered with the feds to announce 273 new public housing units across Nova Scotia, with about 150 planned for HRM. This is a welcome change of direction, but 150 units is only a start. We need a sustained build out of non-market housing over many years to start making up for 30 years of neglect. We need more than a one-off blip in what has been a 30 year drought.
So what does this have to do with HRM? I’m not convinced that a sustained commitment to build non-market housing is something that our Provincial government is prepared to do. I think we would get better results if HRM was in charge instead. HRM isn’t afraid of building and operating stuff, we do it all the time. If HRM were responsible for public housing, we would build units. Being responsible for delivering public housing would also pair very well with our responsibilities for urban planning. Imagine the alternate reality of a developer applying for a permit and, as part of that process, an HRM housing authority could potentially acquire units or land in the development. An HRM Housing Authority could work with non-profits to provide supportive housing too. The end result is that both public and supportive housing could be integrated into communities alongside market housing, producing mixed neighbourhoods that meet everyone’s needs, instead of just those with money.
Council has considered this in the past. Councillor Mason made a motion for HRM to takeover housing from the Province in 2018 which produced a detailed staff report in 2021. Council ultimately turned down opening up negotiations with the Province 10-7 (I was one of the 7 who wanted to proceed). A legitimate objection that resonated around the room is how would HRM pay for building public housing? HRM doesn’t have the money to take on housing and I don’t support massively increasing taxes to do it. To make this work, we need the Province to not only pass responsibility to HRM, but funding as well There is no point downloading housing to HRM if we’re not setup to succeed.
There is a potentially elegant solution to the money issue. HRM’s 2024 budget had revenues of $1,244.8 million. A portion of what HRM collects though gets passed directly to the Province to pay for Provincial programs (mostly education). The 2024 budget projected a total of $201.4 million, 16% of HRM’s revenue, would be taken by the Province. If housing were transferred to HRM, the Province could simply stop deducting money from property taxes. HRM could then build a lot of housing with that freed up revenue!
The timing for this discussion couldn’t be more perfect. The Province is awash in money these days, with projected deficits turning into surpluses in 2023 and 2024 and those surpluses were on top of record spending. The Province has been taking in so much cash from sales and income taxes they can’t spend it fast enough! The Province is routinely criticized for its performance on housing, but they do have money. An offer that lets them transfer responsibility for something they’re struggling with in exchange for freeing up tax revenue could potentially work for both orders of governments.
HRM creating a housing authority and taking on building and operating public housing would be a big move that I think makes objective sense given HRM’s planning responsibilities. If elected, I will bring a motion to Council to start negotiations with the Province on HRM taking over the building and operating public housing, with the key provision that funding to actually do the job must be included.
Dartmouth, we do great things together!