Square roots: Resident worries about Uniacke community’s future

It was a normal Thursday night for Jalana Morton.

On Oct. 3, she was at her part-time job teaching parenting classes at Family SOS on Gottingen Street. Then her phone rang. It was her cousin calling from Dartmouth to see if she was OK.

Her cousin said there were police cars surrounding the area around Uniacke Square, where Morton lives. Morton quickly called home, where her children were playing with their father.

He said the kids were fine, but that a man had just been shot outside Morton’s living room window. The man was treated and released from hospital, but residents like Morton were left shaken and concerned.

“It’s been a lot of sleepless nights,” Morton says. “It’s been hard to be comfortable knowing that just happened just outside my window.”

She lives in the public housing unit with her two children, Elijah, 5 and Jayla, 3. She pays $229 a month to rent her unit, which is owned and operated by the Metropolitan Regional Housing Authority. On top of worrying about safety outside her unit, she has problems inside.

When she moved in, there were mice. At one point, she would catch two or three a day and had to keep traps on her counter. She has even woken up to mice in her bed. Her boyfriend once fell through her staircase.

Elizabeth MacDonald, communications advisor for Metro Housing, says tenant complaints, like mice or requested repairs, are responded to on a priority basis. She was unable to provide a timeline of how long it typically takes to get repairs done.

“When a tenant reports a maintenance issue, each report would be considered individually and would be responded to as quickly as possible, on a priority basis,” MacDonald said in an email.

Despite the issues with her unit, Morton says she appreciates the supportive community that surrounds her in Uniacke Square. With new condo developments and upscale businesses coming to the street, Morton and some other low-income housing residents are wondering whether Gottingen’s future will include their community.

Pushing out low-income families?

Aside from safety, one of Morton’s biggest concerns – for both her family and neighbours – is that Gottingen Street and the north end are becoming unaffordable for many residents.

“For me, a student who is working part-time and receives tuition from DCS (Department of Community Services), it’s [the area is] not affordable,” she says. “Right now, it’s just very difficult to have a lot of extra money to have a lot of fun with the kids or do the things that I would like to do in the area. So it’s very challenging.”

Morton worries that many of her friends and neighbours are going to feel pushed out of the area because of the lack of affordable services in walking distance. She says that new expensive condos moving into the area will likely bring more upscale stores and restaurants, which aren’t affordable for low-income residents.

Longtime resident, new concerns

Brian Grant, 54, grew up in Uniacke Square. He recalls moving into the area and says the units were shiny and new when he arrived. Grant remembers the decade between 1970 and 1980 as being his best in the area. “You could leave your doors open more so in them days,” he says.

“You could walk up Gottingen Street and go to a jewelry store – like, the Metropolitan was a small mini-mall, or whatever, where you could go buy Christmas presents for your family, but they don’t have that anymore.”

Grant currently rents a house across from the now-closed St. Pat’s-Alexandra School, which has been a hot topic since 2011 when the city agreed to sell it to a condo developer.

The sale was stopped because it violated a city policy that states that the public should be able to submit proposals for how to use surplus buildings before they are offered to private companies. Non-profit community groups have until Nov. 12 to pitch ideas to HRM staff about how they would use the building. After that, council will decide whether it wants to sell it to a non-profit group for less than market value or to a private entity at market value.

Grant hopes the school is used to offer more services to the area and dreads the idea of condos being built there. He worries about the changes new condos might bring to the area.

“It seems like they’re just trying to push out the poor and bring in the rich, sort of thing. In my opinion, they seem to be building condos for the people that can afford them and most of the people in this area can’t afford condominiums,” he says.

Plans for affordable housing

While some residents worry about being pushed out, the city is making plans for new residents – from  a variety of income levels – to move into the area. The city recently approved the construction of two new apartment buildings on province-owned land at 2183 and 2215 Gottingen St.

The developers must meet certain requirements, ensuring that 50 per cent of the buildings are affordable housing and the ground floor of each building must be devoted to commercial enterprises.

Mitch Dickey, the HRM planner for Gottingen Street, says the city doesn’t have an overall affordable housing strategy for the area, but says it’s something they will be working on in the next couple of years.

The plans for the two proposed buildings have been entrusted to a non-profit organization, the Housing Trust of Nova Scotia, led by Ross Cantwell. He says the new buildings will be well built and focus on offering housing to families of various income levels. Half of the proposed 250 units will be affordable housing.

The rent for half of the affordable units will be further subsidized with renters contributing 30 per cent of their monthly income toward rent and the province paying the rest. The other units will be available at market prices, starting at $795 per month for a bachelor.

Cantwell says he is a firm believer in mixed-income buildings. He hopes that offering mixed-income housing will bring diversity rather than division to Gottingen.

Education and planning for the future

As for Morton, who is looking ahead to finishing her engineering degree and working on transferring out of Uniacke Square, she hopes the area continues to serve the people who need it.

“We all want success and we all want security and we all want our children to be in a good neighbourhood and raised by a community and not just by individuals,” she says.

“There are a lot of single moms, there are single dads, you know, also two-parent households, but I just hope that everyone stays as a community unit and that they’re not pushed out, they’re not forgotten about.”

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