Housing is Health

BY ALEC STRATFORD, MSW, RSW

Tim Houston’s new Progressive Conservative government is aiming to offer solutions for major political issues. The solutions they propose will be guided by the values and principles of their cabinet, and the government’s capacity to stretch outside of conventional conservative principles will be key to tackling both issues at the top of their list: health care and housing.

As we head out of the global pandemic that unveiled the deep structural inequities, the erosion of the social safety net, and the deep racial inequities that exist in our justice, health, and child protection systems, and as we continue to address the substantial challenge of climate change, we are called on to examine our core values and press ourselves to respond differently.

Good public policy recognizes these challenges areinterconnected, and political decision-making mustchampion policy solutions that can tackle multiplechallenges at once.

Housing policy is an area where many of these underlying issues could be addressed if we had the right values and principles guiding us.

Recently the Affordable Housing Commission produced a report grounded in siloed, individualistic, and market driven policy traditions that prioritize profit over people, balanced budgets over suffering, and corporate greed over human rights. The commission’s report lacked targets or real policy solutions, and only superficially addressed the effects of substandard and unaffordable housing on health, wellness and racial inequity. Its biggest deficit is that it failed to mention that the cause of the current crisis is the commodification and financialization of affordable housing and lack of public investment.The report affirms that housing is a human right, but then continues to champion a market approach that puts the ability to pay for a home above the need for homes for all.

We have already seen the results of policy that stems from the same values that dominate the commission’s report; these values have led to decisions like the one the federal government recently made, which guaranteed a wealthy developer a low-interest loan of 115 million dollars to build just 76 affordable units, which will only remain “affordable” for 20 years, and their affordability is defined relative to the Halifax census area median income rather than the income of households in core need.

What is striking about this deal is that it’s bothfiscally reckless and socially irresponsible; itvalues the developer’s ability to profit over thehuman dignity of Nova Scotians who need safeaffordable housing.

Meanwhile, people continue suffering, and the effects on health, dignity, quality of life and the economy are substantial. The Halifax Regional Municipality’s decision this summer to destroy several shelters provided by a local mutual aid group is an example of this; the communication breakdown between the city, the province, and the people on the ground triggered a moment of crisis that was both painful and preventable, and worsened the precarity of people who were already struggling.

Living in low quality housing negatively affects mental health, and persistent housing problems are predictive of worse mental health outcomes.Cruelly, while child welfare legislation in Nova Scotia defines neglect as the chronic and serious failure to provide shelter (along with other essentials like food and clothing) provincial housing policy and strategy still fails to secure access to affordable safe housing. This failure subjects already marginalized families to investigations, and leads to an over-representation of Indigenous and Black children in care.

The Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives Nova Scotia office (CCPA-NS) estimates that poverty’s costs to the Nova Scotia economy total over 2 billion dollars a year due to lost productivity and excessive costs in government services. Yet current federal housing policy and Nova Scotia’s affordable housing commissions report remain content to continue a misguided partnership with the development sector, which has failed to produce affordable housing and has left thousands of Nova Scotians suffering.

It doesn’t have to be this way. We can implement policy that meets the challenges of our time if our province recognizes these challenges as interconnected and in need of a collective, coordinated response. If we recognize housing as a right and housing as health, then we can set goals for greater quality of life and inclusive economic growth. In fact, these values have already helped design the policy solutions we need; the CCPA-NS Housing for All Working Group presented these solutions in their recent paper, Keys to a Housing Secure Future for all Nova Scotians.

For example, if we applied the policy solutions from that paper, then the $115 million loan from the federal government would have been invested through a public body (like the province or a municipality) and/or the not-for-profit sector, to build closer to 700 permanently affordable units. The paper also recommends public bodies and not-for-profits acquire units that are already built; a quick scan of the multi-unit residential properties currently listed on the market in Halifax shows that a not-for-profit or public body could acquire 63 units for just over 23 million dollars.

What values do we need to lead us through this tumultuous time? They must be rooted in empathy and moral courage to create public policy that is interconnected and enhance quality of life rather than the bank accounts of wealthy developers.

Many Nova Scotians have already realized that this value shift is crucial and have joined the campaign at www.housingishealth.ca, calling on the Nova Scotia government to lead through empathy and moral courage. They’re urging the government to invest $531 million each year for the next decade to ensure that 33,000 affordable housing units can be built or acquired and maintained. They know housing insecurity is about more than just supply, and they’re insisting the government commit an average of an additional $161 million per year for operating spending, to provide needed support to those who are suffering.

We invite all Nova Scotians to lend their voices to this campaign. The map is already drawn and the path awaits, if we have the courage to follow where it leads us.

ALEC STRATFORD, MSW, RSW is the Executive Director/Registrar of the Nova Scotia College of SocialWorkers.