Disputed lease leads to no power for a month, forcing Amherst man to move into an RV

Dwayne Hawkes didn't consider himself homeless — until he really thought about it. 

After a dispute over the lease on his rental unit, the Amherst, N.S., man found himself with no electricity in his apartment for a month, forcing him to move into a trailer on a friend's property. 

"If it wasn't for them, I had no place to go," Hawkes said. "They're nice enough to let me stay here and that's a big help right now. But you're homeless is basically what you are."

Hawkes said once the power was cut off to his unit, he searched for a new place to live for weeks but couldn't find anything in his price range. After relocating to his friend's property out of town, he lost his job because he has no car and couldn't get to work. 

Community service providers say the lack of affordable housing, and issues like renovictions and fixed-term leases, are leaving some people in the town of under 10,000 homeless for the first time.

Aidan Kivisto, the manager of Community Development at the YMCA of Cumberland, says his team is struggling to find affordable units for their clients as housing prices soar. 

"We have a serious housing crisis," Kivisto said. "The vacancy rate is very, very low and rents are very, very high. Our program provides financial assistance to people that are trying to find apartments ... but it's extremely difficult to find housing because there's just nothing available."

The Canada Mortgage Housing Corporation doesn't track rental market data for urban centres under 10,000 people.

But Kivisto said in his experience, the vacancy rate and average rents in Amherst are similar to that of Halifax, which saw the highest year-over-year spike in residential rent in Canada between 2021 and 2022.

In that time, the average rent for a two-bedroom unit in Halifax jumped 9.3 per cent, and the vacancy rate stayed around one per cent — the second-lowest in the country.

Hawkes said when he moved back to his hometown two years ago, he got a two-bedroom apartment for less than $1,000 per month. Now, he's seeing Amherst rental listings for $2,000 or more. 

"I don't think it's fair to us in our community to have to fight to stay in a place we grew up in," he said. 

Leon Landry, Amherst's deputy mayor and chair of the county's inter-municipal poverty advisory committee, said since the COVID-19 pandemic, homelessness has become more visible in the area. 

"I think there was always a demand, we just didn't know about it," Landry said. "We had people couch surfing, living in situations that were not conducive to safety or health. And for one reason or another, the pandemic and the results afterwards, sort of exposed that."

Kivisto said the YMCA conducted the last homeless count in Cumberland County in 2021. It showed 48 people were homeless, 79 per cent of them in some sort of provisional shelter with no prospect of a permanent place to live. 

The next count will take place in November, and Kivisto expects the number to grow. 

According to the Cumberland Homelessness and Housing Support Association Community Hub, from May 15 to July 12, they provided services to 39 individuals, with a total of 479 visits.

Problems started with a fixed-term lease 

Hawkes had been living at his apartment in downtown Amherst for 18 months when his landlord told him he had to move out because his fixed-term lease was ending and wouldn't be renewed. 

According to Nova Scotia's Residential Tenancies Act, a fixed-term lease is a lease "entered into for a fixed period of time, which includes the day of commencement and the day of termination stated in the lease." This means it doesn't automatically renew every year. 

But Hawkes didn't know this at the time, and thought if he kept paying his rent, his lease would switch to month-to-month. 

The end date of his lease came and went, and he paid his rent and stayed. But his landlord cut off his power. 

Hawkes fought to stay even as he moved into the trailer out of town. Eventually he received a small claims court ruling in his favour telling the landlord to return power to the unit and pay him more than $1,000.

But a subsequent residential tenancies ruling affirmed the fixed-term lease was over and evicted Hawkes. He's now appealing this decision.

He says he has few options once the weather gets colder, since he's now unemployed and receiving income assistance. 

"You might want to move into a room at an old hotel and it's got a hot plate, but you don't want to live like that," he said. "You know, I had a comfortable home ... what am I going to find next, right? Where am I going to get the money?"

Amherst working on solutions

Amherst town council and its staff have been working to add more affordable housing and housing support services to the town. 

Landry said the town bought a downtown property in a tax sale and donated it to the Cumberland Homelessness and Housing Support Association to create the town's first emergency shelter. The building will also provide support services and have some affordable units. 

The town has also increased incentives for developers to build new housing, like the new housing infrastructure investment policy approved by council in late January. 

"I think the only real response to it is to try to mitigate the volatility in the housing market. You know, we have many other issues here," Landry said.

"I don't think that there's going to be a discrete, one-size-fits-all answer here. I think it's an all hands on deck, holistic approach that's going to get us out of this mess."