Housing or pets? Shelter says some Nova Scotians forced to choose amid housing crisis

The founder of a small animal shelter says she's seeing more abandoned and surrendered animals as Nova Scotia's ongoing housing crisis forces owners to make a difficult choice — housing or pets.

The Spay Day HRM Society opened in Bedford in March. It helps people who live on low incomes get their cats spayed and neutered. 

It also rescues and adopts out cats.

"We're receiving an awful lot of requests right now from people who have lost their housing and need to surrender their pet or are looking for short-term care while they look for housing," Linda Felix, the founder of the society, told CBC Radio's Information Morning Cape Breton on Monday.

"It's become a bit of a crisis situation."

The conversation has been edited for length and clarity.

Can you give me a specific example of the type of situation you're seeing?

I took in a cat last week from a family. I had spayed the cat for them, low income, three years ago. They kept my contact information and last week they were renovicted. The building was sold. Everybody was given their notice to get out.

The moving truck was there and they had no place for the cat to go. They were moving into a cousin's basement because it was that choice or a tent and I took the cat from them for adoption. I just happened to have room that day, but unfortunately, we have such a limited space for cats that often I have to say no. It's very sad.  

How bad are things getting? 

Very bad. As the housing crisis, crunch, continues, I think it's going to be much worse. Right now, we've got entire families with kids, dogs, cats living in campgrounds. I mean, where all those people going when the campgrounds close? I even neutered a cat for people who live in their car. 

What kind of help is your organization able to offer in these situations? 

I've helped spay cats for people where they did find housing and the landlord required it and I don't blame the landlord, nobody wants a smelly cat. So, yes, cats should be fixed. We were able to help with that, but unfortunately we're not able to offer much else. 

What do people need to know about the current situation? 

I do advise people to reconsider their housing when they're getting pets. It's very hard to find an apartment right now. It's harder to find an apartment that will take a pet. If you've got three cats, a cat and a dog, multiple animals, you're going to have a very difficult time to find housing.

So unless you own your own place, I really advise people to reconsider getting pets right now because the housing crunch is unbelievable. 

These must be really difficult decisions for people to make and often pets are a source of real comfort for people who are going through difficult times.

It's very, very sad. I've had to get a cat from a senior lady. She had three senior cats. She was moving into a seniors apartment where she was allowed two, so she had to give up one and that was a very hard decision for her to pick out which one of her loved pets to let go. The cat took a long time to adjust with us because she was a senior cat and that was a pretty hard one for her.

What is it like for the pets?

Similar to humans. The older the cat, the older the person, the harder to adjust to change. The poor cats don't know why they're there with us. It's tough. One lady was living in her tent with two cats and the litter box and her sleeping bag. 

How is this affecting the overall cat population in HRM? 

We've been working closely with the SPCA and other rescue groups on a [trap-neuter-return] program, and a lot of the abandoned cats were picked up through the program as well. We just thought we had gotten the cat population under control, but this housing crisis is causing a lot of pressure on the cat population, and I fear there's going to be a lot of abandonment. 

We rescued a cat. One week, it's living on the inside of the window. The next week, the people have moved out, the house is for sale and the cat's on the outside of the window. We took the cat in and the next day she gave birth to kittens so those would have been kittens that were born outside and that's where your feral cat population starts.

Is there anything you would like to see done that could help alleviate this situation?

Ontario has a law where landlords can't refuse pets, and I would love to see a similar type of law here. I don't see why people can't have a cat in their apartment, especially in these times of COVID isolation and mental health crisis going on as well. A pet is often very comforting and the animals need a place to live. It's really a problem.