Nova Scotia's Homelessness Crisis

Social workers’ perspectives

BY NADIA SIRITSKY, MSSW, SWC

On August 18, 2021, Nova Scotians were shocked to witness police in Halifax arriving at public parks in force to evict people who had been sleeping there, and overseeing confiscation of any belongings that could not be carried away in time, including tents, shoes and clothing, medications, and wooden shelters that were erected by Halifax Mutual Aid to assist those in need until they could be housed permanently. Such shelters were especially important during a pandemic when everyone was being told to “Stay the Blazes Home!”

The image of a child being tear-gassed amid the resulting chaos served as a wake-up call for many, heightening the sense of urgency around the issue of homelessness, and the larger systemic injustices associated with it. Indeed, NSCSW social workers had shared a sense of relief that the pandemic had brought a growing public consensus that housing is a human right. The past year and a half, a collective shift in consciousness had taken root, along with wider recognition of the privilege of having a safe home to stay in while a deadly virus blazed across the province and the world. The urgency to help people find safety intensified, bringing public health workers to the table with social workers and others.

This was pivotal: shelter providers, social workers, housing providers, health care workers, people from food banks and other non-profits, and some government employees came together for a COVID-19 working group.

Like many other aspects of the pandemic response – such as the government’s ability to create a program resembling a universal basic income to provide financial support during the early days of the pandemic, and transcend obstacles to such policies – once again providers and stakeholders gathered to bridge silos and barriers and come up with solutions for the most vulnerable amongst us.

Unfortunately, quick band-aid palliatives to urgent concerns, such as placing people in hotels during a pandemic when no one is traveling, are not sustainable long-term solutions and do not get to the root of the problem. The price of housing in Nova Scotia has drastically increased over the last few years, and a number of other systemic and situational factors have conspired to make the problem of housing even more dire, despite the best intentions of those gathered around the table to try to address the public health emergency that homelessness represented during the pandemic.

Ultimately, what emerged was a growing consensus that housing is a crucial social determinant of health, that affects far more of us than was previously publicly acknowledged. The pandemic laid bare our interdependence. As many Nova Scotians sheltered in place, watching the news around the world, images of police brutality and systemic racism and social inequities became harder to ignore. More and more people began to reflect upon the truths that are at the core of the social work profession.

The NSCSW’s approach to advocacy includes an emphasis on public discourse, working to raise awareness and build understanding of the larger systemic issues that contribute to specific social challenges in order to reframe these and, in so doing, create a shift in consciousness and increase support around more collaborative and systemic solutions to individual issues. It is therefore gratifying to see the larger shift in consciousness that is slowly occurring around the issue of homelessness.

As more among us recognize that housing is a human right and one of the social determinants of health, it is imperative that public health policies include a broader strategy, such as that described elsewhere in this magazine. As Dr. Jeff Karabanow commented, there has been a “tidal wave of intersectional social justice events that have rocked the way we understand issues such as homelessness.”

Indeed, the overrepresentation of traditionally marginalized and oppressed communities such as BIPOC and 2SLGBTQIA+ individuals clearly demonstrates the ways in which the legacies of colonialism, racism, homophobia and other historic prejudices and systemic injustices continue to manifest in the current homelessness crisis. In particular, the number of Indigenous individuals who are homeless in Nova Scotia, and who themselves experienced the trauma of residential schools speaks to the profoundly destructive legacy of colonial policies and their continued impact. The necessary imperatives of reconciliation and decolonization, antiracism and queer justice, are urgently calling all of us.

For our social workers, who have been working inthis field for years, the sudden spotlight on thisproblem is simultaneously gratifying, encouragingand challenging. Too often, social workers’ actionscan be conflated with the policies that they arecalled to administer, or the lack of resources thatthe system provides.

When the top news story of the day is the work that one does every day, it can become understandably stressful to suddenly feel under the microscope. NSCSW social worker, Eric Jonsson, experienced this first-hand when his vacation to go get married suddenly was announced in the news, with the speculation that perhaps the removal of shelter was scheduled strategically to coincide with his absence.

The synchronicity of that timing was more likely due to carelessness than conspiracy, but what does stand out is the challenge that many social workers might feel in such situations, as well as the hope that can come when shifts of public opinion coincide with political transition. There is a growing recognition that the housing crisis is a problem that contains within it multiple other problems, be it violence against women, child custody concerns due to housing impermanence, or others; consequently, its solution will also require a multi-factorial approach.

In order to effectively solve the problem, it is crucial to fully understand it. This can also enable a plan to be developed with knowledge of the full scope of the problem across the province and ensure metrics to measure success. While two reports came out in the last month to try to provide a more accurate understanding of the current crisis, both are snapshots of a problem that remains understudied, underfunded and under-resourced.

The Affordable Housing Association of Nova Scotia, when contacted for this article, reports that only the Halifax Regional Municipality is required to collect data on homelessness. While HRM may very well be the epicenter of the most visible symptoms, the causes are much more pervasive, and every corner of the province has been affected. Of course, decisions of whether, where, and how to collect data are themselves political, and can be used to obscure the scale of the challenges we face. Therefore, the first step is to work toward continuing to increase awareness and put pressure on our representatives across the province to invest in this problem more systemically.

Both reports that did come out, and which are highlighted in this magazine, are focused on the greater Halifax area, despite the number of social workers across the province anecdotally reporting an increase in individuals who are struggling with homelessness or housing insecurity. There is a growing consensus that this problem has increased during the pandemic, fueled by an impossibly thriving housing market that is renovicting more and more Nova Scotians during an era when job security is increasingly rare. Nevertheless, these problems are growing even as this article is going to print, and the task of documenting them is one that must be faced by policy makers, social workers, and service providers across the province.

The profession of social work was founded by individuals who saw profound social problems, and whose compassion, creativity and advocacy skills enabled them to create solutions that also became safety nets for generations to come. The hope is that this chapter in our history is a time for new and creative solutions to emerge.

Nevertheless, critical theory reminds us that the founding of our profession was also grounded in the ways in which we aligned ourselves with those in power and, in so doing, betrayed so many who we sought to help. We as a profession have only begun to acknowledge the realities of the ways that social work not only colluded with those organizing the Sixties-Scoop, residential schools, and the usurpation of Africville, but provided justification for such violent and destructive activities. There is profound work that must be done to decolonize our profession, and even our own thinking about social problems that we label as “homelessness” and in so doing eclipse the stark realities of colonialism, racism, misogyny and homophobia that continue to guide our social policies, along with the failures of our mental health and health care system. The intersectional problem that is homelessness is also a road map of some of the work that must be done by all of us to undo the systemic injustices that led to this current situation.

As the roots of social work in Nova Scotia deepened in response to the Halifax Explosion in 1917, so too may the tumultuous challenges of our current era compel us to transform ourselves. May we face the truth of who we were, and who we are, and work together to advocate for a provincewhere all Nova Scotians will be housed.

REFERENCES:

Affordable Housing Association of Nova Scotia. (2021, September 28). HRM homelessness statistics. AHANS. Retrieved from https://www.ahans.ca/hrm-homelessnessstatistics-2.

Jonsson, E. (2021, September). Semi‐Annual Count of People Sleeping Outside in Halifax August 25, 2021. Halifax; Navigator Street Outreach Program.

Karabanow, J., Doll, K., Leviten-Reid, C., Hughes, J., & Wu, H. (n.d.). COVID-19: Promoting Disaster Preparedness, Response, and Recovery in Two Communities in Nova Scotia. ts, Halifax.

NADIA SIRITSKY, MSSW, SWC is the professional practice and advocacy consultant at the Nova Scotia College of Social Workers.