Opposition MLAs find ‘big holes’ in N.S. government’s new housing strategy
Opposition MLAs huffed and puffed this week in an attempt to blow down the Nova Scotia government’s recently released housing strategy.
“We can’t trust it, there’s big holes in it,” Liberal and Opposition Leader Zach Churchill told reporters Wednesday afternoon at the legislature after the MLAs voiced their concerns inside the legislative chamber with the housing plan released by the majority Progressive Conservative government Monday.
“They are trying to tell us that there is going to be 35,000 units that are retrofitted with a $750 seniors grant that is supposed to be used for groceries and phone bills,” Churchill said. “How is that going to fix $35,000 units in our province. This plan is a regurgitation of a bunch of previous announcements that they’ve made that haven’t led to any increased housing or more affordable housing. How is this plan going to move the needle at all?
“I now see why they wanted to hide it from the public because it is not good. There are holes in it.”
The housing plan did include $83 million to build 222 new public housing units over five years, $24 million of which is coming from the federal government. The public housing money was announced Sept. 27.
The strategy also included a $108-million investment to increase the number of skilled trades in the province and to modernize the provincial apprenticeship program, all to facilitate more housing unit builds. That initiative was announced a week ago.
Costing discrepancy
Housing Minister John Lohr said during the housing strategy announcement that the province would be investing $1 billion over five years in the strategy but suggested the provincial funding could go beyond that.
The day after the strategy was unveiled, a costing breakdown obtained from the Municipal Affairs and Housing Department showed a total investment of $1.72 billion to fund the housing strategy, $1.68 billion from the province and $32.4 million from the federal government.
Asked about the discrepancy between the department costing and Lohr’s assessment of the funding, Premier Tim Houston said, “I’m not sure,” and it would be best to speak to the department about that.
The housing strategy projected 41,000 housing units would be built in the next five years.
“The need is significant for sure,” Houston told reporters. “It’s many hands. We’ll work with municipalities, we’ll work with the federal government as well. We’ll work with not-for-profits, we’ll work with developers. We need to build housing.”
Set the stage
The premier said government’s role is to set the stage for things to happen.
“We’ll do what we can,” Houston said. “We’ll set the stage for housing to be built. We’re not immune to high interest rates, we’re not immune to other world events, supply chain and such. We’ll do what we can do as a provincial government.
“We know the need is significant. We know that they (Nova Scotians) expect their government to act and move forward, they don’t expect their government to do nothing because the problem is too insurmountable. These are big challenges but we rise to big challenges, just like Nova Scotians.”
NDP Leader Claudia Chender said the pricing discrepancy and the overall plan are sloppy and ambiguous.
“A lot of the money that was announced doesn’t come with a guarantee of housing units or housing preservation so we actually have no idea if this will meet the need,” Chender said. “I think the numbers that they are working off are not the same numbers that they are talking about when they give us projections for population growth.
‘Affordability’
“There is no definition of affordability. We have no idea of how much of that housing will be affordable and with the latest incursion into municipal affairs, we have no idea whether those will be livable communities, whether it will be housing that’s attainable for the vast majority of Nova Scotians who are struggling right now.”
Chender said “there are more questions than answers with this housing report and they (government) are very rightfully under pressure on housing and they’re looking for a way to change the channel.”
The Houston government says it wants to double Nova Scotia’s population to reach two million people by 2060 and the premier said if 41,000 new housing units in the next five years isn’t enough to meet the demand of a growing population, the province will facilitate more building.
“A lot of people who will be moving here will be working in the construction trades, working in health care so we know that the need is there,” Houston said. “I don’t accept for one second that we should try to shrink the population, I don’t accept for one second that we should stop trying to grow. We have governments that are too concerned with the very short term, on the election cycle. We don’t govern based on election cycle, we govern on what is good for the province in the long term and this is a province that has lots of room and opportunity for people and we want them to move here.”
70,000 units needed
Churchill said the Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation and other experts are saying that Nova Scotia needs more than 70,000 additional housing units over the next five years to keep pace with demand.
“We have less units being built in Nova Scotia,” Churchill said. “The premier is telling Nova Scotians that he’s going to double the population when we have less homes being built.”
The Liberal leader said municipalities can’t increase their populations because their water and sewer capacities are already maxed out.
“As a result, I think we are going to see more people go homeless and we’re going to have more working class Nova Scotians who are going to have a hard time finding a place to live, we’re going to have more seniors that are not going to be able to downsize or get out of their big family homes and we’ve got a generation of young people that are coming up in Nova Scotia that don’t know if they are going to be able to build a family here,” Churchill said
“I don’t think this government is taking it seriously. This so-called (housing) plan is proof of that.”
