Nova Scotia’s housing crisis could shut out refugees, immigrants

Syria-Antigonish Families Embrace has been helping Syrian refugee families relocate to Nova Scotia, but the housing crisis is a significant barrier

HALIFAXtoday \  Chris Stoodley         

A sponsor group that helps refugees move to Nova Scotia is finding the housing crisis stressful as it struggles to find affordable housing for Canadian newcomers.

Syria-Antigonish Families Embrace, or SAFE, has been helping Syrian refugee families relocate to the Antigonish area for six years.

The sponsorship group currently supports 15 families, and more are on the way. But the lack of affordable housing in Antigonish — and elsewhere in Nova Scotia — is keeping the organization on edge.

“It’s more of a stress issue at the moment,” Peter Wade, who works with SAFE, said. “We have managed to find houses for everybody; a lot of very generous landlords who really support the cause have been what’s helped us. But we’re kind of running out of the supply of people like that.”

SAFE started in 2015 with six women who wanted to help support families, particularly one family, affected by the war in Syria.

Today, the organization has grown to include many volunteers who spend lots of hours supporting refugee families.

It has since become a sponsorship agreement holder which means the government provides SAFE with spots for refugees and the organization can name specific refugees they want to help migrate to Canada.

While SAFE temporarily paused bringing refugees into Nova Scotia due to the COVID-19 pandemic, it’s now back to submitting applications and finding homes for families.

“One of the problems in Antigonish — and I can’t speak for the whole province — is that we’re competing with students,” Wade said. “Here, a house will go for $600 a bedroom, and for a family coming in that might have a family of five or six, they might need a three or four-bedroom house.”

Wade told NEWS 95.7’s The Rick Howe Show that the government’s suggested numbers provide families with a housing allowance of $700 a month.

“That’s obviously very difficult to find,” he said. “We have, except for a few cases, been unable to find anything in that range. So, we try to help out.”

One way the group has been trying to help is by working with some landlords to help make improvements around the property in return for a lower rental price.

Still, the group often runs into other issues such as some landlords who want to exit the market.

“It’s a lot of contacts, a lot of phoning around, a lot of begging and pleading and volunteering work,” he said. “So far, I must say, we’ve been successful. We haven’t stopped putting in applications because of it; we just get very nervous around being able to find a home.”

However, that doesn’t mean SAFE will always be so lucky.

If the organization can’t find housing in Antigonish, it has a contingency plan to seek support from other community groups in the neighbouring communities.

But when SAFE learns an application has been approved and family is preparing to come to Nova Scotia, the organization only has between four weeks and two months before they arrive. That means the group must scramble to quickly find housing.

“For us, it’s a very reactive thing,” Wade said. “We can’t afford to get it too early because we’re spending money that has been raised and donated to the cause and we don’t want to keep a place too long with nobody in it.”

It’s an issue that’s affecting more than just incoming refugees. The housing crisis has been affecting numerous communities in Atlantic Canada, especially over the course of the pandemic.

In 2019, Nova Scotia welcomed 7,500 new immigrants — a record-breaking number.

“I think that the government is starting to open up,” Wade said. “So, I’m a little worried personally — but excited for the families that are going to come — that we may get flooded in the next year.”