‘Don’t turn a blind eye’: Black homeless advocates say it’s up to everyone to help
It’s a problem we see or hear about every day. Tents in the park, people living in cars, being evicted or worried they won’t make rent. This week we’re looking at the scope of the problem, how we got here, who can fix it and how.
HALIFAX — Left out. Misunderstood. Promised and left wanting.
Their clients are facing discrimination, gentrification and systemic racism, and African Nova Scotian advocates say they want a seat at the table where policy decisions are being made. They want to be heard.
“People tell us, ‘Oh, you’re making history. Why? Because we currently have a shelter being developed in the Preston area which makes perfect sense because that’s where our support system is,” said Marcus James with 902 Man Up.
“Well, we’re tired of making history, we want to be included.”
Issues of discrimination and the lasting scars of racism make housing and homelessness issues in African Nova Scotian communities even more complicated. James and others who help people at their worst every day, shared their stories of heartbreak and expressed their frustration with how their Black clients are being treated during a session at the ending homelessness conference in Halifax last month.
They said solutions for communities can be found at the community level — they just need the support to do it.
Feeling misunderstood, mistrust and the optics of needing help
She’s technically a housing support worker for Adsum for Women and Children, but Rochelle Butterfield said since there’s no housing, it’s more accurate to call her a support worker. She mostly helps with eviction prevention, rehousing services and outreach support.
“Everything is stuck. Resources aren’t available, housing isn’t there so the process of having emergency units on hand in order to support families to help them get more permanent housing isn’t really happening.”
For families of colour, it is even more complicated by racism and discrimination, she said.
“I feel like it’s important to note that historical considerations right now, based on the history of the Prestons, Black Loyalists and Black settlers basically they were promised land they don’t have ownership over,” she said. “Instead they were given tickets of locations and licences of occupation … you can access it but it’s not actually owning the land and it can be taken away at any time.”
This long-running issue of securing land titles has created a deep mistrust of government — and by extension community housing support services like Adsum.
Community and family members hesitate to help out family members because they find Community Services too invasive, she said, and people don’t want the government “all in their business.”
“I heard of an instance where a social worker came and recorded that the person wasn’t taking care of the child and she thought they were looking for lice but were really corn-rowing their hair. There’s a lack of understanding of the process of styling someone’s hair and that can have implications moving forward in terms of the assumptions.”
You feel it
The fear of being misunderstood and having what you’re saying misconstrued is a huge barrier on top of being discriminated on based on your race, she said.
“I’ve seen that play out a multitude of times whether it’s someone staying in a hotel and is approached: ‘Why are you here? Show me your room card,’ without calling anyone else out,” Butterfield said.
“Little things that you can’t really say but you feel it.”
There’s also a stigma around needing help, she said, and the optics of seeking help is a really big deterrent. There are fewer service providers in rural areas like the Prestons and not a lot of representation.
“A lot of clients on my caseload will actually confide in me about how grateful they are having a person of colour actually helping support them.”
Some of them have challenges, some of them have addiction challenges, some of them have mental health challenges but that doesn’t mean we throw them away.
– Shawn Parker
We don’t throw them away
Shawn Parker spends a lot of his days handing out coffee tokens on the streets and asking people to share their stories.
“At times — I’m going to be honest with you — when a mom calls up and says, ‘Look I got no food to feed my kids. I don’t care about me eating.’ That touches you. Where are we as a society?” said the street navigator and outreach support worker for north-end Halifax and downtown Dartmouth.
He said everyone — not just governments — can make a difference. He said it’s everyone’s responsibility to look after the forgotten ones.
“Don’t turn a blind eye to this because it’s not going to get any better,” he urged.
“Some of them have challenges, some of them have addiction challenges, some of them have mental health challenges but that doesn’t mean we throw them away.”
He said he enjoys his work but often he’s frustrated because of bureaucracy, the lack of services, and the wait times for services.
“But I know it’s going to get better. I feel it in my heart.”
Young and old
James and 902 Man Up manage three shelters in HRM. He said they get about 40 to 50 calls a day about young men and women who need help, who are coming out of incarceration, or from their parents’ home. These young people used to couch surf, he said.
“Not anymore, folks. Our kids are out there. I’m getting those calls on a daily basis ‘Can you help my kid? He can’t come home though … can you keep an eye on my child while he’s out there?’ That’s what we’re facing and it’s getting worse.”
He said homelessness and the impacts of it are “equally as bad as the lives we lose to gun violence because we have a lot of young men and women who are committing suicide now because of it. This is our lived experience.” 902 Man Up was formed as a response to gun violence.
He’s also seeing university students in their fourth years — some who are studying to be social workers — staying at shelters.
“They’re keeping it together so they can finish school so they can change their circumstances,” he said.
“They’re homeless in university — there’s something wrong with that.”
Then there are the seniors who are walking through the doors in greater numbers these days.
“The mass majority of them are saying my loved one, my partner, my best friend in life passed away. We need to do a better job and we need to hold government accountable to support those individuals,” James said.
“They’re dealing with a death, the loss of a loved one and on top of that, now they’ve got to be concerned about being homeless? Really? C’mon. Who are we?”
According to the Affordable Housing Association of Nova Scotia’s latest numbers, of the 1,066 actively homeless people in HRM on the by-name list, 145 identify as being of African descent.
Needing to lie about their last names and hometowns
Bernadette Hamilton-Reid, with the Decade for People of African Descent group, said young people can’t get jobs or rentals because of discrimination over their family’s address and last names.
“So we have to deal with that, with our community lying about who they are, where they live or using their grandmother’s address, someone who lives in the city,” she said. “We’re in 2023, that should not be happening.”
She said Gottingen Street is gentrification “to the high heavens.”
“That used to be one of the strongest Black communities in Nova Scotia and what happened? Developers came in and built up everything,” she said.
“They’re pushing us out and that’s what’s happening in many of our communities.”
Hamilton-Reid said they just want their voices to be heard by decision makers.
“We’re not looking for handouts, we’re looking for support from the government to give us what we were promised when we came here,” she said.
“We need to be sitting at the table where policy changes are being made.”
Home-grown solutions
We need to start looking at solutions that come directly from the African Nova Scotian community, said James. He said he understands there are a lot of people who want to help, but not everybody is on their side.
“That’s the reality and we see it within policies, we see it within organizations that are being given money that is meant for the Black community … but they’re doing it,” he said.
“Our ideas, our programs are duplicated but guess what? They can’t get it right. Why? Because those are not the voices that we need to be hearing.”
It doesn’t mean other people and organizations can’t be supportive, he said, but the leadership needs to come from the community.
“I welcome everybody — I don’t care what race you are — who understands that and is willing to work side by side with me.”
It’s disappointing, he said, that he’s often asked to talk about these issues and shares stories like these, but the truth of the matter is, it stays in the room after everyone leaves.
Related, the province recently announced they’re spending an additional $2 million in the Community Housing Growth Fund to create a dedicated stream to support Black-led community housing initiatives.
“We know that African Nova Scotians have been historically underserved when it comes to housing opportunities,” Municipal Affairs and Housing Minister John Lohr said in a news release Nov. 7. “This investment is focused on supporting the growth of Black-led community housing organizations so they can create homes that address their unique needs.”
And last month, Akoma Holdings Inc. opened up the Fairfax Neighbourhood, an eight-unit affordable housing neighbourhood for African Nova Scotian families in Westphal.
We need to get creative
Butterfield said we need to get creative and innovative with development solutions in the Prestons, like added incentives for developers to build there. She said empty-nesters could be encouraged to rent out rooms.
People need to be empowered to work through the system, to speak for themselves effectively, even with the fear of being misunderstood.
They also need more research, as data is important to getting government attention.
Local service providers need to increase their cultural competency, and there needs to be more Black representation in those organizations, she added.
There has been some, small attention on this issue. In January, the province announced funding for an Africentric bachelor of social work pilot cohort program at Dalhousie University where 25 aspiring bachelor of social work professionals can learn as part of an Africentric cohort. It’s spending $175,000 a year, from 2023 to 2026, for this one-time cohort.
