Kentville, as pictured in the 1960s, like many Nova Scotian towns, has seen its population climb, particularly within the last few years. - ContributedBy chance last week I came across an old Chatelaine magazine with a headline on the cover that grabbed me. It asked, ‘What’s Behind the Housing Crisis?’“There’s not enough being built,” Constance Mungall wrote. “What is being built for an easy market costs too much.
“The housing industry continues to grind out 1920’s solutions for 1970s circumstances,” this feisty writer noted, blaming all levels of government for only providing Band-Aids, along with builders, money lenders and land speculators.Pointing to Brisbane, Australia, Mungall suggested that buildings should be tax free and land taxed up to 10 per cent of its value per year. I was fascinated to hear that in 1968, Halifax had a desperate housing shortage.
The Interchurch Housing Society, working out of Kentville, made some fantastic initiatives happen. I remember executive director Jennifer Foster saying, “subsidized housing is really subsidizing employers.”She claimed she’d heard employers say staff weren’t worth any more than they’re paid, “but what they’re paid isn’t enough to pay for housing and raise a family.”
The federal government did reclaim some responsibility for housing in 2017. Prime Minister Justin Trudeau launched a National Housing Strategy to spend $70 billion. Two years later his government legislated housing as a human right. But the positives are few and far between.