The Nova Scotia 2023-24 budget discussed Thursday is investing $6.5 billion into healthcare, an additional $1.2 billion more than the last two years. Michael Kabalen, executive director of the Affordable Housing Association of Nova Scotia (AHANS), said more funds should be allocated towards the province's housing crisis.

"So last week, the provincial government announced its budget and yesterday, the federal government also came up with its budget and I think the response to both is not enough," said Kabalen.

Michael Kabalen is the executive director of the Affordable Housing Association of Nova Scotia. Photo contributed.

Kabalen said the challenge is that there is not enough money allocated for housing in either of those budgets, and hopes housing would see more investments like Nova Scotians have seen in health care.

"The reality is that governments haven't in a long time made the meaningful investments required to build and maintain existing, affordable housing. And so,  it's really fallen to the not-for-profit sector and the community housing sector to fill that gap," he said.

Kabalen said as a nonprofit organization that new several hundred million dollars are being spent to bonus healthcare workers, which are important causes that need to be funded. As for the housing budget, $17 million was allocated, a notable difference.

Even when addressing the housing crisis, Kabalen said that the government has chosen to focus its attention on more upmarket housing and the supply problem in Nova Scotia, where most of that supply is happening outside of where people would traditionally need it.

"Most of these and a lot of the investments are happening in rural Nova Scotia, which also needs those investments but it's, again, it's not really targeted at where we're seeing the problem grow most, which is within the urban center of the municipality."

"If you believe there's a healthcare crisis, then you need to solve the housing crisis too, because stable housing is one of the most effective ways to reduce people's reliance on the healthcare system for other issues further on down a lot," said Kabalen.

Kabalen said taking pressure off the healthcare system will also take pressure off the emergency rooms.

He added as Nova Scotia's population continues to grow, with 20,000 new people migrating to Halifax last year, addressing the housing issue more effectively by allocating more funds will maintain a more sustainable economy for the next hundred years to come.

"Where's the plan for the throw the newcomers to ensure that they receive the same level of service, the same access to housing, the same access to education and health care? There is an obligation to make investments in affordable housing as well education and healthcare," said Kabalen.

Since the rent cap has come into place, Kabalen said he noticed an inward migration in the municipality, while the number of people experiencing homelessness continues to rise.

"As of this week, I think it's 190 individuals that are chronically homeless. We believe 50 of them are couch surfing, or in and out of shelters, staying at hotels through one of the shelter diversion programs that government offers, but that population of individuals is about 190 people in the Halifax region."

Individuals working full-time jobs at fast-service restaurants, grocery stores, or retails, or are cleaners, and lower-income working individuals are falling into housing insecurity because of the inability to pay rent, according to Kabalen.

"The inability to pay the new rents that have happened because of the increased demand, right? That's the group where there's not been a lot of support offered."

Kabalen said the ways the province can better address the issue would be to build more houses, add more money to existing housing programs, designate nonprofits in the community and grant access to capital so that non-profits can compete with the private sector to provide a larger scale of affordable housing developments. He added that this model has taken place in Canada in Quebec.

"Quebec has 55,000 Not for profit housing units, and through the Social Housing Agreement in 1996, they delegated that responsibility on two provinces. Quebec said we got it from here, and BC picked up that model a few years later, as well. We just need the government to trust the community to deliver on their responsibility, which is housing."

Kabalen said that if immigration numbers continue to increase, and if investment in housing is going to remain at the same level as it has for the last number of years, then the housing crisis is only going to increase and get worse.

"If you take on average 10 new individuals every week, entering into the chronic homelessness system and extrapolate that out by 10 years, that adds up really fast. What we've been seeing to date is the investments aren't keeping up with the need. And so if the investment stays the same, the needs gonna continue to increase," he explained.

He added as the levels of inward migration increase, it it necessary for the government to make larger investments in housing to effectively address the homeless and housing-insecure population.

Listen to the full interview below: