N.S. Legal Aid lawyer calls for renoviction ban to ease growing rental housing crisis
Councillor Sam Austin called it an emergency.
Elizabeth Fry Society had just released its annual homelessness survey and the results were alarming. The report showed that the number of people in the city sleeping outside has more than doubled in the past year, to 178. Most are men, one third are Indigenous, one in four are women.
A day after its release this summer, the Dartmouth Centre municipal councillor posted the report on his social media account. He included a stern message for the province.
Austin told the Nova Scotia government “to stop dithering” and to treat homelessness “as the emergency it is.”
The report offered government a warning: renovictions are making the homeless crisis in the city worse. A quarter of the people surveyed in the report said they lost their home because they were renovicted or being forced out after their fixed-term leases expired.
Tammy Wohler, a Nova Scotia legal aid lawyer, says Austin is right. She goes further, saying the province should reinstate a ban on renovictions and demolitions that was in place during the pandemic. And the city should back it up by denying renovation and demolition permits for occupied buildings.
Wohler, who specializes in tenancy matters, says the housing crisis demands immediate action. Vacancy rates in the city are at an all-time low and rents are among the highest in the country. There’s no place for people to go. …[Continue Reading]