Less than 10 per cent of homeless shelters N.S. promised last year currently in place

HALIFAX –

Nova Scotia has installed fewer than 10 per cent of the 200 shelters it promised to set up for the province’s homeless residents more than eight months after first making the pledge.

The province’s Community Services Minister says work is underway to open up 96 more of the insulated, fibreglass shelters across three sites, adding the government is still trying to nail down locations for the remaining 85 shelters it has purchased.

Brendan Maguire says his department is looking “everywhere and anywhere” to find suitable locations for the remaining shelters, and could not say when the other 96 will be ready for residents to move in.

Nova Scotia announced in October 2023 it was paying $7.5 million for 200 shelters made by the American company Pallet, with 100 of them earmarked for use in Halifax.

There are 19 people living in individual 70-square-foot Pallet shelters at a site in the Halifax-area suburb of Lower Sackville, set up alongside separate washrooms and a laundry facility.

On the same day the province announced the Pallet shelter purchase, it also released plans for a 52-unit tiny home community to be set up on land owned by the Halifax Regional Municipality.

The province had initially said the first 30 units would be ready for residents to move in by summer, but it has since pushed back the opening date to the fall.

This report by The Canadian Press was first published June 16, 2024.