Dan Scott is worried about his fellow community members in Sussex, N.B.
He said the number of people experiencing homelessness is growing and has also come with what he believes to be heavy substance abuse.
“Like, I know people who are working right now, every day, that still are homeless, so to speak,” he said in an interview on Wednesday. “They might have a place to stay but it’s not their home because there is no place for them to rent.”
He said resources are scarce in rural communities like Sussex.
“We have no facilities or programs for homelessness here either, we have no band-aid, and from what I can tell no plan to counter it,” he said.
Scott worries particularly about youth experiencing cycles of poverty.
“The problem is it just gets pushed to a fringe community, a place that people often overlook and forget about and (written) off as ‘a bad neighbourhood’ when the reality is much more simple, there is no proper support in place to lift these people up,” he said in an email.
Scott has reached out to police a number of times, he explained, but said it feels like something significantly bad would have to happen for police to take action.
He said he believes crime has drastically increased as well, describing safety issues such as people staying in vacant apartments and finding drug paraphernalia lying around.
He also reached out to Sussex-Fundy-St.Martins MLA Tammy Scott Wallace who redirected him to the Safe Communities and Neighbourhoods unit of the New Brunswick RCMP.
He said he feels frustrated by the inability to get answers or help for those who need it.
Sussex Vale Transition House executive director Julie Matthews said the community is struggling like many other communities in New Brunswick with housing, especially affordable housing.
“Market rents are higher than they have ever been and that has also created challenges for the average person in retaining their housing,” she said in an email statement. “Our clients have experienced increased difficulty in securing housing, simply because there is nothing available.”
She said, “We know that our municipal government is very intentional about supporting ways to bring more housing options to our town and surrounding community.”
Matthews said it would be helpful to build units that are made for families and individuals with low incomes.
“This would likely require incentives from government bodies, as there are caps on how high the rent can be for such units, thus reducing the potential income for the developer,” she said.
Global News reached out to Sussex mayor Marc Thorne and MLA Tammy Scott-Wallace but did not hear back by publication time.
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