After living in a hotel for more than a month, Lisa DeWitt’s bank account is empty, she has no prospects for a permanent place to live and it’s almost check-out time.
The 52-year-old was forced to leave her apartment in New Glasgow, NS, after a fire broke out in a building in September. Her unit did not go into flames, but was told the entire building was unsafe to live in.
“I was already thinking, ‘I’m in trouble,’” she said.
She knew she was having trouble finding a new home. Nine months after the fire, DeWitt was on a month-to-month rent and looking for a new apartment, to no avail.
Her struggle to find affordable housing is not unique. Data collected from community organizations in every region of the province clearly indicate that homelessness is a problem that extends from Yarmouth to Sydney to Cape Breton, and everywhere.
The latest available numbers are 1,168 people recently seeking help because they are homeless or at the point of losing their home. The only area where data is not available is rural Cape Breton.
DeWitt does not consider herself homeless, but she fits most definitions of sleeping on or off the couches, along with someone else who lives in a hotel or car.
Community organizations try to keep track of the number of people experiencing homelessness, and the provincial government relies on those estimates to inform its response to the policies and services provided.
People who collect that data often believe that their counts underestimate the true extent of the problem. That’s part of cases like DeWitt. She is hesitant to reach out for help because she does not think she deserves it.
Halifax’s latest count is 416. The number is updated and posted weekly by the Affordable Housing Association of Nova Scotia and is an aggregation of agency information across the municipality.
The system used by the Association is the gold standard, and in other areas several organizations are working on their own development.
Currently, outside the Halifax area, numbers are not collected regularly or consistently, making it difficult to make a direct comparison between regions. Some of the statistics provided are one year old, others are just days old. Some come from surveys involving multiple community organizations, while others are from individual housing support workers.
In one single day in April, 119 people were considered refugees in the Cape Breton Regional Municipality. Over the course of a month last fall, 226 people were counted across Hants, Kings and Annapolis counties.
A similar month-long count was completed in Cumberland and Colchester counties this spring, yielding a total of 100.
Since the beginning of the year, 171 people have sought housing assistance from the same agency in Lunenburg and Queens counties.
By last week, 30 people were on the homeless list in Shelburne, Yarmouth and Digby County.
For Pictou County, the county’s only residential support worker relies on a caseload. In the past six months, that worker has had 55 clients.
Just on the highway, the situation is similar. One home support worker serving in Antigonish and Guysborough counties has had 51 clients since last week.
That worker is Anita Stewart, a nonprofit A Roof Over Your Head. Stewart knows that at least 10 people in Antigonish town qualify for help, but they have not heard of it, so they are not considered official.
‘Feeling so much defeat’
Stewart said she often receives shocking responses from people in her community when she shares those numbers. In the small towns of Nova Scotia, as in Halifax, there are no tent camps; Homelessness is often out of sight.
“I feel very lost,” Stewart said. “We have 51 people because we don’t have housing because we don’t have housing.”
Antigonish owns several apartment buildings that are under construction or recently completed, but none fit Stewart’s client budget. He said the building’s developers were looking for $ 1,500 and more a month. Most of Stewart’s customers can afford to pay around $ 700.
“The immediate short-term solution is that we need emergency accommodation. We need to get people out of the cold,” he said. “In the long run, our demand is to install our affordable-housing units.”
Stewart brought those solutions to a recent meeting he called with politicians representing his clients in municipal, provincial and federal governments. She said she is satisfied that the need is understood so urgently and is expected to meet her again this fall.
The provincial government is expected to release a plan to address the housing crisis this week.
In the meantime, DeWitt continued to look for a new apartment with less morale.
“There are hundreds of people applying for an apartment. I’m just numbered. By the time I reach it, it’s gone, or no pets, so I don’t even have the option to apply.”
Her experience mirrors the findings of a housing report in Pictou County, commissioned by the Pictou County Housing Coalition and released in August.
According to the report’s authors, the vacancy rate in New Glasgow was 2.4 percent in 2020.
“We can expect the rental vacancy rate to only deteriorate by 2020, as it is now nearly impossible to find rental homes in Pictou County,” the report said.
Next step: live in her car
When an evacuation order came in after the apartment fire, DeWitt packed some belongings and her two small dogs and headed to a nearby hotel.
DeWitt’s six-week hotel stay was paid for – two nights by the Red Cross of Canada, a week by family friends and 18 days by the Tierman Society, which helped DeWitt quit the abusive relationship several years ago.
At $ 100 per night, she has reduced her savings to pay for the rest. When she spoke last week, she was preparing to go in her car by the end of the week. Another family friend moved her to a different hotel last week.
DeWitt said she was proud to be financially independent before she lost her apartment. As a continuing care assistant, her work is in high demand in long-term care facilities and shifts are always on offer, she said.
She is now unable to work. When she got out of her hotel room for more than a few minutes, her dog’s gaze prompted the hotel staff to call and ask them to come back.
She said that if she didn’t care about eviction, she would work full-time, as she did before the apartment fire. Over the past six weeks she has been paying for her savings with hotel stays and other living expenses.
DeWitt said friends and colleagues have advised him to leave New Glasgow for a community that has more favorable conditions for renters. He said he doubts there is such a place in Nova Scotia.