N.S. government says it's not planning to build new public housing, but will upgrade existing buildings

The Nova Scotia government has no plans to add to itspublic housing stock, the minister responsible confirmed to members of the legislature on Tuesday.

Municipal Affairs and Housing Minister John Lohr made the comment during debate on his department's budget.

"We feel that, as government, we need to do a much better job managing what we have," he said later in an interview at Province House in Halifax.

Lohr's deputy minister speculated earlier this year that the age of existing stock andcost and difficulty of upgradingit could lead the government to buildnew public housing for the first time in close to 30 years.

But Lohr said the government will instead spend $50 million in the next four years to upgrade existing stock, a plan that will affectabout 75 per cent of the province's 11,000 public housing units.

• Government changes threshold to qualify for rent supplements

The government is also usingthe spring budget to add 1,000 rent supplements and funding for programs that help people remain in their homes, said Lohr.

"We've made very significant investments in those."

Even with those initiatives, however, there are 4,790 people waiting for a spot in public housing and the average wait time is a little more than two years.

Liberal housing critic Braedon Clark said the minister is making a mistake. Given the waiting time for people to be placed, Clark said it's "well past time for them to invest in public housing."

"The last public housing unit that was built in this province was 1995. So we're coming up on 30 years here," he said in an interview.

Governments of all stripes have passed up adding to the stock, but Clark said the situation now is "the worst it's been" since 1995. He pointed to the government of Newfoundland and Labrador, which recently announced a three-year plan to build 850 new units, as an example of what should happen here.

Need for affordable housing

NDP housing critic Suzy Hansen said building more public housing would be a way for the government to ensure an increase in the availability of housing that is truly affordable for those most in need.

"Because it's rent geared to income and it's public housing that they can build a lot of in a short amount of time," she said in an interview.

Lohr said officials in his department are also focused on shifting people who are "overhoused" to a more appropriate unit, an issue recently flagged by the auditor general.

The minister told the legislature that 1,378 households are considered overhoused, meaning they have more space than required for the number of people living in the unit. Correcting that, he said, would create spaces for about 1,000 more people.

There is not a timeline for that work, given the sensitivity of the issue, said Lohr.

"We know that it's not easy for those people to move. They've had a lifetime in that unit, they've probably raised their children there, the children have left now [and] it's a single senior, possibly, in a four- or five-bedroom unit."