Nova Scotia NDP Leader Gary Burill hosted a Q&A session today with the NDP candidates running across the South Shore today in Bridgewater.
The main topic of discussion was the housing crisis. Burill asked Lunenburg candidate Alison Smith and Lunenburg West candidate Mereydie Ross what they’ve heard locally about housing in their respective ridings.
Smith described what she’s been hearing while canvassing. “People just can’t find rentals, with housing prices so high it’s a great time to be selling but if you are renting their almost zero vacancies which means people are being evicted for sales and can’t find affordable places to go,” Smith said.
Smith went on to explain how short-term rentals are exacerbating the issue, “We hear so often from people about the amount of AirBnBs popping up which takes away from the overall rental supply and leaves people unable to find housing,”.
Mereydie Ross echoed similar sentiments and said in her response that the housing issue is impacting specific demographics. “Accessible housing is something I hear about often, that there aren’t enough places for people with mobility challenges,” Ross said. ” We also hear about youth in crisis and the lack of places for them to go, right now there is no safe place that youth can turn to on the South Shore,”.
After hearing from the local candidates Burrill made a commitment to make the rural housing crisis a priority for his government.
“An NDP government will make rural affordable housing a core priority, when I say core I’m speaking about all dimensions of the problem; rents and rent control, the supply of affordable housing, and a more thorough regime for the regulation of short-term rentals,” Burill said.
Burill went on to detail his plans for short-term rentals. He says Nova Scotia needs to imposed higher fees on short-term rental platforms. He also wants to give municipalities more power to halt new short-term rentals when vacancy rates meet a certain threshold. Lastly, he believes the province needs to create a formal registry of all short-term rentals in the province so policies can be made with the most accurate data possible.
Following the Q&A session, Burrill continued the rest of his day canvasing with local candidates.
