Looking for a place to live can be very frustrating and time consuming. The best place to look for an apartment is in the classified section of your local newspaper. When you have found an ad that looks interesting, you just have to phone for an appointment to look at the place.
When you call the rental office or the landlord, be sure and ask them if they accept children in the building. The landlord is not allowed to refuse to rent to you if s/he believes that:
You
have too many children;
Your children are too young; or
The landlord doesn’t want any children in the building.
The landlord is also not allowed to refuse an apartment to you for the
following reasons:
You are not white;
You are not Canadian;
You are on social assistance; or
You are a single mother.
Single moms have had trouble with one or all of the reasons listed above, so if a landlord won’t rent to you and gives you one of these reasons, PLEASE, PLEASE fight back! Start by contacting the Human Rights Commission in Halifax. Then, if you can, get together with other single moms and organize to embarrass this landlord. Refusing to rent an apartment to us because we are single moms and/or because we are on social assistance is nothing but a judgment call on our characters. No one has a right to do that!
If you get a chance to look at the apartment and decide that you want it, you will probably have to fill out an application asking your name, address, source of income, etc. The landlord will probably take a few days to go through all the applications from people who want the apartment. If s/he decides that you would be the most suitable tenant, then you may be asked to sign a lease that may be month to month or year to year. All leases are standard, so be very careful to look at sections which the landlord may have changed or added to, as any changes are invalid.
You MUST receive a copy of the Residential Tenancies Act with your lease or else your landlord is in violation of the Act. You can terminate your lease if you have not received a copy of this Act.
On August 1st, 2000, Housing Services became a division within the Department of Community Services. It doesn’t change much for you except that you’ll now find the Housing Department’s phone number under Community Services.
Contact the Housing Department for any other programs you may be eligible for. Look in the Blue Pages of your phone book for these numbers.
The
following are explanations of some different kinds of housing that are
available.
Click on any of the below chapter sub-titles to go directly to
that section. |
Co-op Housing is for people from all walks of life. People who live in co-ops range from “professional” people such as lawyers, to stay-at-home moms on social assistance, to university students. Couples, singles, families all live in co-ops. It is usually cheaper to live in co-op housing than to rent from a private owner. Co-ops are also nice because you feel as if you are part of a community as the members come together for meetings, usually once a month. The idea is “housing for people, not for profit.” It’s important to remember though that you will be expected to participate in meetings and contribute to the overall functioning of the co-op. If this isn’t your thing, you may want to try living somewhere else.
If you would like to find out the names of co-op housing projects in your area in the HRM, call the Co-Op Housing Federation at: 455-0470. They can also give you an application for the co-op of your choice.
Non-profit housing is not the same as public housing. Non-profit housing is run by non-profit organizations and usually is helped with a subsidy from the CMHC (Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation). Some non-profit housing rent is based on your income; some of the rents are low but not based on income. Some non-profit housing has a mixture of low rental units and market rent units. Market rent is an amount set by CMHC and is similar to the amount you would pay a private landlord.
In
Nova Scotia there are several types of non-profit housing. There are units
available for low-income seniors, students, women, single parents, natives,
and people who have tested positive for HIV/AIDS. Non-profit housing is
different from co-op housing in that you don’t have to go to meetings
and do not have a voice in the management of the organization.
Public housing was established mostly for people who have low incomes. We are either on social assistance or we are working poor people. Either way, our jobs or our social assistance cheques are not enough to cover the high cost of private rents. The private rental places that we are able to afford are often run down and completely unsuitable for raising children. These high rental costs combined with the costs of electricity, food, clothing, plus all the taxes we are continuously having heaped upon us mean that we can’t afford to live. Public housing is supposed to help out people in our situations.
Public housing is usually funded by all three levels of government: municipal, provincial, and federal. The public housing department is usually referred to as a “Housing Authority.” So, if you are looking for public housing in the telephone book, look under the name of your community or town and add “Housing Authority” to it. For example, in Dartmouth, look under “Dartmouth Housing Authority.” Incidentally, the Dartmouth and Halifax housing authorities have been merged into one called the Metropolitan Regional Housing Authority, which covers Halifax, Dartmouth, and Bedford County.
There are seven housing authorities in the province that are responsible for looking after public housing. Applications for accommodation can be attained from the housing authority in your area or the regional office of the Housing Department.
Each housing authority has its own rules about who can live in public housing. Give them a call and find out if you are eligible.
There
are usually long waiting lists, but call and get your name on there.
Another option is finding shared housing with another or other single mom(s). This has several benefits which include saving on rent by having the children share a room, and saving on daycare by splitting childcare responsibilities. If you are lucky enough to have a fellow single mom and friend that you can share housing with, this is a viable co-operative solution.
If you are a mom on social assistance who is looking for housing, again we have certain rules attached to our lives. We have a maximum amount of money which we are allowed to use for rent. It might be, for example, $530 a month. If the only apartment we can find is $580 a month, we are expected to come up with the extra $50 and this usually comes out of our food money. However, if we find an apartment at $480 a month, we do not get to keep the extra $50 to put towards food or anything else! The social assistance department will deduct that $50 from our cheques! So make the most of your money. You won’t be rewarded on this system for trying to save a dollar or two. Get the best apartment you can find as close to the maximum budget that you can! Getting a run-down apartment at a cheap rate will only save the social assistance department a bit of money while you are expected to struggle along with a wholly inadequate food budget, among other things.
Here are several contacts for various non-profit housing. You can get more from the Housing Department.
CONTACTS FOR THE NATIVE COMMUNITY:
Tawaak
Housing Association
6175 Lady Hammond Rd
Halifax, B3K 2R9
Ki’knu
Housing Commission Society
P.O. Box 1320
Truro, B2N 5N2
893-9804
Mi’kmaq
Family and Children Services
Eskasoni, Cape Breton
379-2433
HRM CONTACTS:
Harbour
City Homes
(Halifax Non-Profit Housing)
421-8703
Metro
Non-Profit Housing Association
466-8714