It was raining the other night —and cold.

Rain mixed with snow.

Tonight the temperature will plunge to -8C.

Halifax has more than 1,000 people sleeping rough, and 200 living in tents tonite.   Ten more people become homeless every week.  Some are sheltering in underground parking garages — until security chases them out.  A few I see in doorways. 

Due to the skyrocketing cost of property, there are no hostels (oh, there’s one on Barrington St. for tourists), no dormitories, and only a few church halls allow overnight guests. Maybe one or two recreation centres (notably in Dartmouth) allow some homeless to stay the night.  Then there are the jammed charity shelters, most of them are for men.  The Salvation Army on Gottingen St has 60 beds — all for men. The 60 beds are almost always full. What about women and children, where do they go?

Our city fathers and mothers (the mayor and elected councillors) insist they can do little about lack of housing.  Well – they say –housing is up to the province.  And the province is  busy giving free handouts of land to commercial developers who then frequently receive grants to build new houses and apartments with little stipulation that those will be affordable.  For example, last year the Tory government gave a $22 million forgivable loan to Clayton Developments to build 373 “affordable” units, in order to “fast track” housing.

What does ‘affordable’ mean?

Even if these new rental units and apartments were available tomorrow – we still have not established what “affordable” means.  Is it 10-20% less than market rent? Market rent for a two bedroom apartment in the Halifax municipality is $2,565 per month.  A 20% decrease in rent means a two-bedroom apartment would rent for $2052 a month rather than $2500. Who can afford that?  Does affordable mean paying 30% of the renter’s gross income? Is the apartment “affordable” for a few years and then the landlords can revert to market rates or, indeed, charge whatever they want?  The jury’s still out on all this. 

But what we know is that most of the housing built by private developers today is going to cost way more than most working people can afford to pay.  That is a given. The Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives NS says the Living Wage in HRM is $26.50 an hour.  Barely a person who works in retail, in tourism, in restaurants and bars or in clerical support earns even $20 an hour, let alone the 25% more that is required for the Living Wage.  We need only look at Pete’s Frootique, a downtown Halifax supermarket owned by giant Empire (Sobeys).  One hundred workers there are on strike because they can’t afford to buy the food the store sells.  Sobeys offered them 5 cents more an hour than minimum wage – to bring their hourly wage to $15.05.  Even at that wage, and even if they are paying HALF (rather than a third) of their monthly earnings for rent, they can barely afford $1,200 a month for apartment rent. $1,200 is only 66% the average rent for a one bedroom apartment which is just shy of $2,000 a month.

In the meantime, should hundreds of people, many of them who are the working poor, or people with disabilities, or those who can’t work full-time because of addiction issues or mental health problems be left to freeze outdoors? Or to be injured or die in an encampment fire?

Here’s a novel suggestion:  Why doesn’t the city or the province’s social services pay for them to live in hotels over the whole winter?  Read my post here from March 2023 on this issue. Tourism is limited from now to May.  And there are lots of rooms.  Have a look at this handy up to date chart of hotel rooms: 

Hotel Rooms in Halifax, Nov. 2023

Barrington Hotel	200
Sutton Place Hotel	262
Lord Nelson Hotel	262
Hfx Marriott Harbourfront hotel	352
Westin Hotel	310
Holiday Inn Xxpress – Bedford	113
Holiday Inn Express – Dartmouth	125
Four Points Sheraton	177
Prince George	203
Best Western, Chocolate Lake	141
The Halifax Hotel	295

Total room number is 2440.

There are more than 2400 rooms in hotels in Halifax and Dartmouth – and that does not include rooms in hotels and motels on the outskirts of the city, or the airport strip. The count doesn’t include airbnbs, guest houses or boutique hotels. 

So why are rooms in these hotels NOT being used for all the rough-sleepers?

Business as Usual: What hotels want, how HRM helps

Hotels want to sell rooms at $300 plus a night. That’s a given. Hotels believe that now they can cash in on Xmas parties, overnight stays, weekend Xmas shopping trips, family visits and more.  Most guests pay $300-$400 a night. 

By custom and practice, hotels want to fill their rooms with paying guests until at least the New Year.  That’s 37 more days.  

After the new year, tourism and family visits drop off.  People don’t have much money to travel here. And conference season doesn’t typically start till March. 

This is the “sweet spot” for social services.  In the first two months of the new year, social services grudgingly pays $100 to $200 a night for unhoused people to stay in hotels.  Sometimes for two week stretches, sometimes it’s for shorter or longer.  True, people with disabilities get marginally more  consideration and get to stay longer.

Hotels are reasonably happy with this arrangement.  First they are guaranteed revenue during the leanest months of the year.  Second, it’s not the whole hotel but only perhaps 50 or 100 rooms that are used.  Usually hotels ensure that the paying guests are on different floors from the homeless.  As long as social services provides monitors to ensure bad behaviour (such as smoking or partying) is discouraged, and the rooms are kept reasonably tidy, it’s a win for the hotels.  

And let’s not forget the more upscale the hotel, the less likely it will agree to accommodate rough sleepers.  The Halifax Hotel tends to be the go-to for clients of social services.

Of course there is the little item of food.  People who stay in hotels have to be provided with some food, since they can’t cook in a typical bedroom.  Social services has to provide three meals but the hotels don’t want those guests in the dining rooms.  So they provide trays to the rooms.  And then there’s paying for custodial staff to monitor those hotel residents.

What I’m trying to show is that our government(s) have no intention of disbanding the hundreds of tents around the city, and getting people to a safe, warm environment.  At least not until after January 1, and even then the people don’t get to stay three or four months but a few weeks at a time, if they are lucky. 

Pact with Tories and Halifax councillors

So Premier Tim Houston, and our city councillors have made a pact.  

No talk of staying in hotels till after the new year. Today no one talks about rooms in hotels. Suddenly after Jan. 1 everyone talks about it. 

And then there is no guaranteed hotel stay, no long term stays in hotels over the winter, just for short periods– keeps all the hard to house people on their toes I guess.

So it is a revolving door – short hotel stays then back into the tents and the encampments in the depths of a maritime winter. 

Image at the top: The ruins of the Halifax Poor Asylum, burnt Nov. 7, 1882, this photo was taken in January 1884. Nearly 350 people once lived there. More lives were lost in that blaze than in any other fire in the city’s history. The poor asylum stood on the corner of Robie and South Streets. (credit: Wikimedia). The poor asylum was a remnant of the Victorian workhouse — for more read here. And also read Brenda Thompson’s wonderful book published in 2018, A Wholesome Horror: Poor Houses in Nova Scotia.