An organization in Nova Scotia that provides housing support for women and families is sounding the alarm over homelessness in Halifax.
Adsum for Women & Children says they’re receiving more and more requests for help from people who have no safe place to go.
“What we’re seeing at the moment is the demand is so high for folks needing immediate access to support and shelter,” said Meghan Hansford, a program manager at Adsum.
“For instance, the other day we had one bed become available in one of our programs and we had six families that were calling, needing immediate support.
“It’s an impossible decision to try and see who’s going to get that bed.”
So far this month, Adsum has received more than 90 calls from families — including those with children — who have nowhere to go.
Adsum has a variety of different services, including a hotel program and an emergency shelter. Currently, Adsum is supporting a total of 105 families, including 197 children.
Hansford said people might be surprised to learn that many children are experiencing homelessness.
She noted the by-name list, which tracks the number of actively homeless people in Halifax, does not include children in the count. As of Monday, there were 1,191 people on the list.
“Children are just not captured in those numbers, so the reality of hundreds of children in Halifax and in Nova Scotia (who) are experiencing homelessness, I think, will be shocking to a lot of people,” said Hansford.
A United Way report from January indicates that Nova Scotia has the highest provincial poverty rate in the country, and more than one in 10 people in Halifax are living in poverty.
Another report from the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives found that more than one in five children in Nova Scotia were living in poverty in 2021.
‘One paycheque away’
Hansford said people reach out for housing support for a variety of reasons. Often, those reasons include someone losing their home after their fixed-term lease ends.
Others include women and families escaping from intimate partner violence, or simply being unable to keep up with rising living costs.
“We’ve got an array of reasons for people calling,” said Hansford. “The cost of living right now is just extraordinary.”
She said this speaks to the ongoing housing crisis touching communities across the country, and the unique challenges for affordable housing in Nova Scotia.
The issue of homelessness, housing insecurity, and the cost of living is one that resonates with almost everyone, said Hansford.
“We are all one paycheque away, one major life event away from our lives kind of falling apart,” she said.
“And when there’s no kind of alternatives or solutions, that’s when people come into crisis and reach out to us.”
Hansford is calling for change that would make a difference — not just “Band-Aid solutions.”
“The realities that families are facing right now is extremely hard and extremely challenging. And the answer, really, is more housing,” she said.
“We don’t need more hotel rooms, and we don’t need more shelters. What we really need is a pathway for all the folks that we’re serving now to be able to move on to find safe and permanent housing.”
— with files from Alex Cooke