On the first day of the Nova Scotia Legislature I asked Housing Minister John Lohr how it is possible that his government didn’t reach out to the new developers of Ocean Breeze - traditionally affordable housing to over 1, 000 people - to ensure that it stayed affordable and people did not become homeless?
Full exchange:
SUSAN LEBLANC: Madame Speaker, my question is for the Minister of Municipal Affairs and Housing. Earlier this Summer, the first eviction notices were distributed to tenants of Ocean Breeze, a traditionally affordable housing complex in Dartmouth North that is home to over 1,000 residents. You would think that the sale of such a significant piece of real estate would be of interest to a government that wants to protect affordable housing, but FOIPOP shows no records of correspondence between the department and the new owner. I can table that. In the midst of an affordable housing crisis, how is it possible that the minister didn’t even reach out to the new developer to make sure that Ocean Breeze residents don’t become homeless during this redevelopment?
HON. JOHN LOHR: Madame Speaker, I will say to the member that we have a public-facing part of our department, and our senior staff interact with many different entities -not only developers, but not-for-profits, community housing groups, many different groups, but the way this works is they approach us. If we didn’t interact with them, they didn’t approach us. That’s the reality. We don’t go out and approach groups. They come in and they approach us. That’s how we do it, and we react to that. They come to us looking for information on programs or whatever. This is how this takes place. If we have no record of having communication with them, they didn’t ask for communication. All of our information is readily available online, how to connect with us.
SUSAN LEBLANC: With all due respect, Speaker, a government that is all about action on housing seems to have a strange way of approaching that action when they’re waiting for people to come to us -sitting back and waiting. The developer has been clear that it is open to working with this government to try to maintain affordable housing at Ocean Breeze. After the government didn’t act on an opportunity to purchase the site, we were hopeful that the government would step in to make sure that the housing remains affordable, but FOIPOP documents also show that no funding agreements between the government and the new owners of Ocean Breeze exist. Will the minister make a clear commitment that there will be no net loss of affordable housing due to the redevelopment of Ocean Breeze?
JOHN LOHR: Again, I will say that this is a private development. We will interact if we are asked to interact. I can tell you that we are spending an unprecedented amount of money to preserve affordable housing. One of the examples I will give you is CHAP, which has gotten national recognition, where we have a Community Housing Acquisition Program to enable not-for-profits to purchase. That has preserved and saved hundreds and hundreds of units. We continue to work in this space. We’ve put almost $300 million into housing this year. We will continue to do that. We will continue to build up community housing and not-for-profit housing, which is something that the Affordable Housing Commission report identified as very weak in Nova Scotia. As I’ve said, we’re continuing to do an unprecedented step -a historic step of building public housing units in Nova Scotia. As I’ve said, we’re continuing to do an unprecedented step, a historic step, of building public housing units in Nova Scotia.