Rally sees hundreds of housing advocates defend Halifax crisis shelters

A couple hundred supporters of Halifax Mutual Aid gathered for a rally at downtown Halifax's old library on Sunday afternoon hoping to pressure the city into cancelling its plans to demolish a number of makeshift crisis shelters.

“Only when they come up with a plan to house everyone within the HRM will [Halifax Mutual Aid]’s crisis shelters no longer be needed,” the group said in a prepared statement read on behalf of its spokesperson Campbell McClintock. “While the HMA crisis shelters are inadequate in many respects, they give occupants a level of autonomy which can only be matched with permanent housing. These shelters are only here as long as folks experiencing homelessness need them.”

The rally comes on the heels of a week that saw increased acrimony between housing advocates and HRM officials.

Any tensions that had cooled since HMA and other grassroots began putting up the shelters were freshly ignited when CTV News confirmed rumours of the city’s plans to dismantle the shelters.

“These shelters cannot remain on-site indefinitely and will be removed,” city public affairs advisor Maggie-Jane Spray told CTV News. “A deadline has not yet been finalized. Placing anything in a park for the purpose of temporary or permanent accommodation is not permitted under By-Law P-600.”

It also came after municipal, provincial and federal politicians championed a $115 million federal loan for local developer BANC Investments to complete construction of a 12-storey, 324-unit multi-use building on Joseph Howe Drive.

That building had already been green-lit by city council in 2020 and is predicted to have rent costs in excess of $1,400 per month.

While the HRM has indicated it intends to clear the shelters out of city spaces, it doesn't have a clear timeline.

The HRM has offered to place those who are using the crisis shelters in hotel rooms for up to two weeks. However, HMA said after those two weeks, the city has no outlined plan for what happens next.

“People are being asked to leave the shelters, which are some small version of home to go to a situation that's even more uncertain and even less,” says McClintock in an interview with HalifaxToday. “If the city isn’t offering to lend a hand, if they're not offering housing to folks, they should really be getting out of the way of this project.”

City officials were absent from the event, so McClintock distributed the phone numbers of Mayor Mike Savage and downtown Halifax Councillor Waye Mason, with whom housing advocates have taken particular umbrage.

That prompted a phone blitz which saw many in the crowd leaving messages on both politicians' voicemails.

The crisis shelters began appearing in public parks and on city property back in January, and the shelters have become a central focal point in the push for affordable housing in the HRM.

Andrew Goodsell, one of the first people to receive one of HMA’s shelters, said he asked for it to be specifically located at the old Halifax Memorial Library's location downtown.

“I wanted the whole world to see me give the city the big old middle finger and say, 'House me,'” Goodsell said to the crowd. “I’ve travelled across Canada with my thumb, and I’ve learned that — not only here in Halifax, but across our country, — we tend to spit on our homeless.”

The rally organizers also launched a sticker campaign with orange stickers that read “This Should be Housing.”

At the rally, McClintock said people should place the stickers on city buildings like the old Halifax Memorial Library — a building that has been vacant for years which McClintock said could easily be used to house people.

Others took aim at a range of provincial government spending programs that could be redirected toward housing, such as a $70 million funding agreement the province struck with the Art Gallery of Nova Scotia.

“$29 million for affordable housing, but there’s $70 million for the 'art gallery crisis?'” Nova Scotia ACORN member Sage Beatson, who's also a NSCAD student, said at the rally. “I don’t think so.”

The Affordable Housing Association of Nova Scotia estimates 400 people face long-term homelessness in the city, and that there's a steadily shrinking number of affordable units available. 

Organizers said a recent report by the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives called on the provincial government to build or acquire more than 33,000 non-market units that will be run by non-profit and co-op housing organizations — a major step, but a concrete proposal for a problem government officials cast as intractably complicated.

“Why are we relying so much on the private marketplace to provide a human right?” Beatson said. “I wish we had a government that was tireless and ferocious and fearlessly on our side — but I just don’t see it. I do see people like that in my community.”