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HALIFAX, N.S. —

At first, Rebecca Sparks thought she was the victim of a cruel prank.

On Thursday evening, the mother of two returned to the room of the Dartmouth Travelodge Suites where she was living with assistance from the provincial Department of Community Services. She found a note on the door telling her she had less than 24 hours to find another place to stay.

“It was just a paragraph, with no date or logo for the hotel or a signature, nothing,” said Sparks on Saturday. “I thought it was someone who didn’t like the people staying here, going around and putting them on the door as a joke.

“It wasn’t professional, it wasn’t anything.”

It was no joke. Two days later, Sparks was one of a number of temporary Travelodge residents on social assistance still scrambling to find a new place to live. She hoped that by Saturday night, she’d be relocated, although she says at this point her only options are single rooms for her and a son and daughter in their late teens.

"Social services’ suggestion was that I split my family up since my son was old enough to go to a shelter." - Rebecca Sparks

An employee at the Travelodge who wished to remain anonymous said over the phone that some of the residents on social assistance had been given an extension of a couple of days, but that the motel’s involvement in the program had effectively ended. He cited a number of reasons for the policy change, from a need to clear out rooms for future guests to disturbances caused by some of those placed there by Community Services.

For her part, Sparks said her caseworker was not informed that the Travelodge was cutting its ties with the program, and had been told her room was paid up until Feb. 26. She added that she was only staying at the Travelodge after a red tape mixup regarding her rent assistance payments forced her out of her Dartmouth apartment at the end of January.

“Social services’ suggestion was that I split my family up since my son was old enough to go to a shelter,” said Sparks. “I said they’re wrong, I’m not splitting my family up.

“How am I going to tell a child that I raised since he was new to the world, that he has to go to a shelter. Can you imagine?”

Mark Culligan, a community legal worker with Dalhousie Legal Aid Service, frequently helps out income assistance recipients when they have difficulty getting payments. He’s only too familiar with this situation and said it’s only going to get worse before it gets better.

“This kind of confused, sloppy decision-making happens when the province is relying on motels (to fill in the gaps),” he said on Saturday. “We don’t even know if there are formal relationships with them, but they’re totally unaccountable because these private arrangements are not public in any way or subject to any kind of public review.”

"This kind of confused, sloppy decision-making happens when the province is relying on motels (to fill in the gaps)." - Mark Culligan, Dalhousie Legal Aid Service

Culligan said due to low Halifax vacancy rates, he’s seeing intense competition for apartments in neighbourhoods like north-end Dartmouth because there are so few places affordable for low-income residents.

He frequently gets calls from people who’ve been approved for a rent supplement, but can’t find a suitable place in which to move. Despite all the construction taking place around Halifax, he said there’s still a need to create alternatives for those who aren’t currently being served by the housing market, and the province needs to have more efficient ways of finding emergency housing for those on social assistance than putting them in motels.

“We need to have a hard look at whether that money would be better spent providing more funding to non-profit emergency shelter provision,” said Culligan. “Especially for programs for families with children, for whom a shelter situation isn’t always appropriate.”

On Friday at Province House, Nova Scotia Premier Stephen McNeil acknowledged the need for greater housing and shelter assistance. He cited the domino effect of higher rents in the city pushing residents with special needs further outside its core and the impact of short-term rental services like Airbnb on lowering vacancy rates. But he also said that bringing back rent control would not help solve the housing crisis.

The premier noted there are options in Halifax’s Centre Plan that will allow for affordable housing units tied into future development plans, and that the province is working with community partners like Adsum House to help families in need find shelter.

“There is no one solution,” he told reporters. “The idea that we can slap on rent control hasn’t stopped the issue in other provinces, as a matter of fact it’s created a problem. There’s no one public policy, like saying we’re going to build all these units, it will require a multi-faceted approach because everyone who finds themself under-housed has a different reason.”

"There is no one solution. The idea that we can slap on rent control hasn’t stopped the issue in other provinces, as a matter of fact it’s created a problem." - Premier Stephen McNeil

Dartmouth North MLA Susan Leblanc, whose riding includes the Travelodge Suites, disagrees on the issue of rent control. Speaking to reporters at Province House on Friday she said “rent control just part of a holistic approach” to ensuring everyone can have a roof over their head, and that she has heard of at least one other instance of people on social assistance being told to leave emergency motel lodging on short notice.

“The solution is to make sure that people are able to pay their rent in the first place,” said Leblanc, “by substantially increasing income assistance rates, making sure that people have access to well-paying jobs that provide living wages and making sure that rents can't be exorbitantly raised through a system of rent control.”

Through it all, Sparks is trying to stay positive, even though her situation has forced her to give up her pet dog and could potentially split up her family. And knowing that many others living on social assistance are in the same predicament doesn’t help matters.

“It breaks my heart,” she said. “Although I have a head on my shoulders and I’m smart, I’m just out of work right now. There are people out there who don’t have the ability to ask for help or know the resources that are available.

“I feel so bad for these people because they sit on the street, they panhandle, everybody has their own unique situation. For anybody to discriminate against us, based on someone’s own individual situation, it’s not fair.”

With files by Andrew Rankin

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