Nova Scotia’s new welfare rules exclude tents, cars and trailers

Nova Scotia homeless move their tent to another location in Victoria Park as police enforce removal. Photo by Peter Parsons

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To qualify for higher income assistance in Nova Scotia, a home now needs running water and a sewer connection.

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The province filed the legislative amendment on Aug. 25 and it took effect the same day. It rewrites the provision the Nova Scotia Court of Appeal interpreted on Aug. 7, when it ruled that Bradley Lowe’s tent was his accommodation.

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Lowe died Dec. 15, 2023, of an overdose in a tent in front of Halifax City Hall, after camping at Victoria Park. Two months earlier he applied to move from $380 a month to the enhanced rate of $974, saying he had a disability and owned his tent. He was denied because he was deemed unhoused.

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Under the amended rates, a single person on income assistance receives $410 a month without a home and $738 with one. The rate rises to $1,022 for someone with a home who has a disability, is 55 or older or meets other criteria in the regulations.

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“I am satisfied that the tent owned by Mr. Lowe, and in which he resided, was his accommodation within the meaning of s. 49 of the Regulations,” Chief Justice Michael Wood wrote in the decision.

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Bradley Lowe died Dec. 15, 2023, after overdosing in a tent in front of Halifax City Hall. Photo by Facebook

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The amendment strikes “is renting or owns their accommodation” from Section 49 and substitutes “lives in a home.”

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The previous regulations never defined accommodation, but now defined a home as the primary residence of a recipient that is a self-contained unit they rent or own, a room in a municipally approved or licensed rooming or lodging house or a single occupancy room in a building run by an approved provider under the Supportive Housing Program.

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A self-contained unit requires private living, kitchen and bathroom facilities, including a plumbed water supply and sanitary sewer disposal. The definition of mobile home is repealed outright.

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Vince Calderhead, the Halifax lawyer who represented Lowe’s estate, said in an email to National Post that the plumbing requirement is “the key change that serves to overturn the court of Appeal’s decision.”

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Calderhead said this month that people living in their cars might also have qualified under the ruling, and that it was hard to say whether people in trailers would. The province could rewrite the regulations and redefine accommodation “in a way that would exclude tents or cars or campers or anything like that,” he said.

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The same test now applies to the $738 rate, which Section 48 pays to a recipient who “lives in a home or boards.” Anyone who qualifies for neither falls to $410.

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The order describes itself as updating assistance rates, adding income exemptions, amending definitions and modernizing language. It does not mention the court.

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The Department of Opportunities and Social Development said in a statement that the court interpreted the regulations as they were written at the time and identified that some language, including how accommodation was described, could be clearer. “While previous decisions had supported the department’s interpretation of the regulations, the Court of Appeal reached a different conclusion, highlighting the need for greater clarity,” the statement said.