What experts say Nova Scotia can do to preserve our stock of affordable rental housing

A recent CBC News analysis found that Nova Scotia is rapidly losing some of its most affordable apartments, but housing experts say there are ways to prevent that.

One approach is to remove existing apartments with affordable rents from the influence of market forces. For example, a non-profit group could buy a building that was previously owned by a for-profit company.

"That's really the only way to ensure that longer-term affordability … so that there's no chance of [rents] just continuing to rise and rise," said Trish McCourt, the executive director of the association representing non-profit housing providers.

Research has shown that non-market housing providers like non-profits and co-ops keep their rents lower over time, said affordable housing researcher Catherine Leviten-Reid. 

The province does have a Community Housing Acquisition Program, which provides loans of up to $10 million for non-market housing operators to buy existing multi-unit residential properties. 

"With that acquisition program, one of the challenges is that non-profit housing providers can't necessarily move and act quickly enough when a unit comes up available," said McCourt.

"They're competing with developers that are buying up properties."

One potential solution to that could be implementing a mechanism called the "right of first refusal" for municipalities, said Leviten-Reid. 

There are variations to the concept, but generally this would give municipalities the opportunity to buy an apartment building that is being sold before anyone else, preventing it from being sold to a new private-sector company. Municipalities could then sell those properties to non-market providers. 

In 2017, the province of Quebec passed legislation giving the City of Montreal this right, and the city has since used that power to purchase buildings with the aim of turning them into non-market housing and preserving their affordability.

Meanwhile, in the U.S. state of Colorado, a bill came into effect in August 2024 temporarily giving local governments the right to purchase existing subsidized affordable housing provided they continue to use the property for that purpose and match any offers the seller receives.

This was done with the goal of preserving thousands of units set to lose affordability protections. 

Both Leviten-Reid and McCourt said improvements could be made to Nova Scotia's acquisition program, with the latter saying funding needs to be increased for these types of initiatives.

"Our non-market housing providers need to access more grant money to be able to buy that housing and … [operating funding] so that they can keep those rents affordable," said Leviten-Reid. 

McCourt said the eligibility criteria for the program could be more flexible as they can currently be difficult for some non-profits to meet. For example, projects must have a minimum of five units.

"There's a lot of small rural communities that have limits on the sizes of their buildings that aren't ever going to meet this criteria," McCourt said.

In a statement, Nova Scotia's Department of Growth and Development said it has significantly increased its investments in the community housing sector. 

It pointed to the acquisition program, which as of January has loaned over $29 million this fiscal year for the purchase of 495 affordable housing units. 

The department also pointed to the Community Housing Capital Fund, which launched in 2024 and provides grants toward down payments for existing multi-unit residential properties. The department said this fund can be combined with the acquisition program.

McCourt said although the capital fund can pre-screen an organization so it can act faster to purchase housing, its eligibility criteria can also be challenging for non-profits to meet. 

For example, organizations must have three or more years of experience in acquiring, owning and operating housing.

"There's a lot of communities … that have started to create organizations to be able to build and develop non-profit housing," McCourt said. "They don't necessarily have more than three years of audited financial statements."