Finding affordable housing in N.B. like winning the lottery, says tenants' advocate

A historic building in Fredericton is set to house four subsidized apartments on the second and third floors.

The Housing First units King Street are transitional housing for people living with homelessness to have a chance to get on their feet.

"Smaller projects like this where it's four to six people individually in a unit is living together they've found that they can often have the most positive effect,” said John Leroux, Housing First project designer.

“They're essentially normalized,” Leroux said.

The United Way is monitoring the list of applicants for the units.

But according to some advocacy groups, these kinds of initiatives are not enough.

"For the four people who will benefit from that, this is huge it's like winning the lottery,” said Matthew Hayes, a spokesperson for NB Coalition for Tenants’ Rights.

“We virtually have a lottery system for affordable housing, there's so many people waiting,” he said.

According to data analysis by the NB Coalition for Tenants’ Rights, the census shows that New Brunswick lost over 8,600 affordable housing units between 2016 and 2021.

That represents a loss of 25 per cent of the housing stock that would be considered affordable

“The numbers show that they're building lots of houses but they're above $1,500 a month,” Hayes said.

New Brunswick's growing population is exacerbating the housing crisis.

"To say we don't have a housing problem would be a misstatement because we do,” said Premier Blaine Higgs.

“We've seen 30,000 people come to our province just in this last year alone,” Higgs said.

The new four units on King Street are amongst several housing projects in the capital city.

"Some people assume that if you're only creating housing for four people it's a drop in the bucket,” Leroux said.

“But it's an important drop in a finite bucket,” he said.

"We need a lot more of that type of initiative,” Hayes said.

“But also this is transitional housing so we're talking about people who are difficult to house or people who are already experiencing homelessness,” he said.

“The reason why they're experiencing homelessness is because we have a housing system that makes people poor."

The province is holding a forum on housing Tuesday at UNB Saint John.

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