An affordable housing development slated for Eisner Cove in Dartmouth, N.S., is raising questions over how the province is addressing the housing crisis.
Mount Hope Village is intended to take up 45 hectares of land between Woodside Industrial Park and Highway 111 and bring over 700 units of “attainable housing” for middle-income earners. However, the designated location is atop of what’s currently the largest wetland in Dartmouth.
Bill Zebedee, president of the Protect Our Southdale Wetland Society, says the attainable units are expected to cost around $1,500 to $1,800 a month, which isn’t affordable for many Nova Scotians.
“Under a real, affordable home, based on 30 per cent of a household’s monthly income, affordable is $500 to $800,” he said. “That’s a big, drastic difference.”
Clayton Developments, which is behind the Mount Hope Village project, did not respond to Global News’ call for comment to answer questions about how they will ensure the units remain affordable once completed.
Freyja Beattie, an affordable housing advocate with ACORN Canada, says if the new development is raising environmental concerns, the new development could be built somewhere else.
“You have environmental versus affordable housing, but it doesn’t have to be that way.”
“There’s other places that it can go. Shannon Park, nothing has been done with that. It’s just sitting there. The place on Quinpool where the fair was. That’s just sitting there,” she said.
Suzy Hansen, the housing critic for the Nova Scotia NDP, says when the provincial government considers any affordable housing development, the perspective of those living in the community within it need to be heard.
“If there’s issues here, if there’s things we need to explore a little bit further, i.e. environment situations, environmental care, then we need to be exploring that,” she said.
Hansen acknowledged there are limited options when it comes to where affordable housing can be built, but says the focus should be how government defines affordability.
“If that’s not the end goal, to have affordable housing for people that need it the most … then we really need to start thinking about is it worth that type of development in those areas if it’s not going to be truly what they say it’s going to be,” she said.
Hansen added that government has the ability to control the rules a developer has when it comes to environmental standards.
“Instead, we’re not looking at that picture when we’re giving developers the right-of-way to do these types of things,” she said. “These are things we could be doing, that this government is not doing.”
The Department of Environment has told Global News it is not commenting on the development, as an appeal is underway of the department’s decision to approve a wetland alteration.