Experts, stakeholders give N.S. mixed grades for handling of housing crisis in 2023

The signs are impossible to ignore: online pleas for rentals, sparse shelves at food banks, tents crammed on public squares.

In 2023, rents in Nova Scotia rose faster than anywhere in Canada, vacancy rates remained low and homelessness ballooned. Housing was the biggest story of the year.

"We're all one paycheque or one crisis away from being homeless ourselves," said Allison Rouillard in November, discussing her eviction and subsequent decision to move into an RV even as winter approached.

While the housing crisis is a national problem decades in the making, it is particularly acute in Nova Scotia, which is now short tens of thousands of homes.

To help make sense of this massive issue, we asked experts and stakeholders to reflect on the past year and share their thoughts on how we got here — and how we can fix it.

Nova Scotians began 2023 believing the province's temporary rent cap would end on Dec. 31. Tenant groups and Halifax's director of housing and homelessness warned if it was lifted, homelessness numbers could explode. But many landlords said they were struggling to turn a profit in the face of rising costs. 

Colton LeBlanc, the minister in charge of residential tenancies, announced in March that the rent cap would be extended until the end of 2025, although it would rise to five per cent in 2024.

But still, the average rent on apartment listings in the province rose by 13.6 per cent to $2,097 in October compared to a year earlier, according to data from consulting firm Urbanation and Rentals.ca.

Mark Culligan, a community legal worker with Dalhousie Legal Aid in Halifax, said new tenants face skyrocketing rents as landlords aim to recoup money they lose on their rent-controlled units.

Culligan told CBC in a year-end interview he worries the rent cap will be blamed, and dropped instead of fixed.

"The province really needs to introduce some measures to allow landlords, if they have legitimate expenses, to pass those costs on to existing tenants so that new tenants are not left bearing the brunt of increased expenses," he said.

Culligan also pointed to the proliferation of fixed-term leases as a key problem in 2023, given the province's refusal to regulate their use.

Tenants and landlords were also waiting for the creation of an enforcement unit to regulate rental disputes, after that idea was included as a recommendation in a consultant's report commissioned by the province. But in October, the government announced it would not be happening in 2023.

Kevin Russell, executive director of the Investment Property Owners Association of Nova Scotia, said this is one reason it would be tough to give the province a passing grade.