Woman from Halifax who needs double hip surgery and has been living in a tent since March

HALIFAX, NS – Rats entered her tent.

They came in in the middle of the night after it had rained heavily.

Hollie Frandsen sat crying in her wheelchair next to her tent door on Monday afternoon. Inside, many of her belongings were wet.

“I’m in pain and I sleep in the mud night after night,” Frandsen said. A five-gallon bucket next to her tent serves as her toilet.

Frandsen, 50, said she is on a waiting list for double hip replacement surgery. She has osteoarthritis, developed after two serious car accidents that happened when she was a teenager. She suffers from chronic pain and needs a wheelchair to get around.

She lost her home in the spring of 2022. In March, she ended up living in Cogswell Park in Halifax with her son Matthew McCall, 27, and dog.

Frandsen has income support of $370 per month. She said she visits Souls Harbor Rescue Mission as often as she can for a hot meal. She and her son had a meal there on Monday.

McCall takes care of his mother. He helps her get dressed and when to use the bucket, but that’s a tall order. He’s in a drug addiction recovery program and trying to stay clean.

“I’m doing my best to help both of us,” McCall said. “I try my best not to cry at night because my mother is in so much pain at night. Waking up to your mother crying is not something I would wish on my worst enemy.”

The pair want to continue living together, but say there is nothing for them. Frandsen said her income support worker is unable to find housing for them.

The Department of Community Services said it cannot comment on individual cases or circumstances.

A spokesperson for the department said it encourages all clients who are struggling to contact their social worker. Individuals living in the Regional Municipality of Halifax can contact the hub at 902-431-7848 to get in touch with a housing support representative.

The department says it is investing $8.2 million this fiscal year to improve homelessness services, hire more housing support workers, and increase supportive housing opportunities.

The housing crisis in the Halifax region is getting worse. As of May 2022, an additional 230 people have become chronically homeless in the borough, according to the Affordable Housing Association of Nova Scotia.

The association considers anyone without stable housing to be chronically homeless for six months. By May 23, that number had risen to 711.

Jeff Karabanow, a professor at Dalhousie University’s School of Social Work, said the county is improving housing and homelessness, but there simply aren’t enough resources available. Especially when both issues have been largely ignored by governments for decades.

The mother and son are in a disastrous situation, as is the housing crisis itself, Karabanow said.

“We are just seeing that homelessness is a huge crisis; it’s a disaster,” said the old homeless lawyer. “If you add an individual physical or mental health challenge to that, it just becomes an incremental, catastrophic crisis.”