N.S. news: Many seniors wait for public housing [Video]

HALIFAX –

About half of the 7,020 households on Nova Scotia’s wait-list for public housing are composed of seniors, the deputy minister of housing said Wednesday, a number the opposition said should make the government feel ashamed.

Seniors also compose more than half of the 1,800 low-income residents living in Nova Scotia’s 11,200 public housing units, Byron Rafuse told a legislature committee.

In response, NDP Leader Claudia Chender said, “the government should have an enormous amount of shame at the number of seniors that are struggling to make it month to month.”

Those seniors, she said, have worked their whole lives and are now on a fixed income, unable to keep up with the rising cost of living.

Braedon Clark, the Liberal housing critic, said the high proportion of seniors on the public housing wait-list is disappointing and “incredibly sad.”

However, Rafuse said the government is making “fairly good” progress toward shrinking …