Non-profits want details on $500M housing strategy

Non-profit groups in Nova Scotia that help the homeless are asking the provincial government to clarify its housing strategy, arguing it's too vague and not heading in the right direction.

Nearly a dozen organizations came together to draft a letter to Denise Peterson-Rafuse, the Minister of Community Services. They want to know what will be done to help people on fixed incomes — or no income at all — get a roof over their heads.

The provincial government announced last month it will spend $500 million over the next decade to improve affordable housing in Nova Scotia.

Paul O'Hara, a social worker at the North End Community Health Centre in Halifax, said he's left wondering how that money will be used.

"We need housing, we need social housing, public housing," he said. "Governments are afraid of those words and they run from them and they don't develop in the manner of which they need to be developed. That's really the issue."

O'Hara worries the province is working with private developers, rather than non-profit groups.

"There are projects where people are more or less in the same circumstance financially and I think it's a good example of where community is built and where supports exist. There are numerous not-for-profit organizations across the province that want to do that, and they're being shut out," he said.

"They're being told, 'You have to partner with the private sector somehow to do this kind of work. We're not going to support you doing this work on your own.' That's my sense of what's going on and that is the wrong approach."