Halifax Confidential: Our developers are saints
Though this article seems Halifax and NS focused, it’s worth a read because if you are in almost any Canadian city — this is what’s happening on your doorstep, it colours your housing scene, and turns the heads of your city councillors.
First. Just so we understand.
Alex Halef and his BANC Investments Ltd are saints. Yes –saints. That’s what many on Halifax Regional Municipality (HRM) council believe. BANC promises to create thousands of housing units, none “affordable”, but throughout HRM, so we should be grateful. Really?
In January 2021 BANC bought Bloomfield School. Granted the property had a troubled history. It served as a public school for nearly 70 years, then a robust community centre for children, families, the arts, and various activities for another 20 to 25 years. But in 2012 the school was slated to become a new northend residential community. Under the then-NDP government (2009-2013), the quango NS Housing promised to build 478 rental units—40% affordable, and rented to Haligonians with lower incomes. When the NDP lost the provincial election, the deal went south. The school buildings and land went on the market. BANC, a private developer, bought Bloomfield for $22 million.
Housing: in Halifax, not really a right
So, if we believe that developers want to help the people of this city, and want to make housing a reality for people in the community, BANC was our saviour. Or were they? As a for-profit developer, BANC says their company will build housing! We’ve heard that a lot of times – but when will they build and where? How tall and massive will they build? And will any units be affordable? If the past is any clue, that’s extremely doubtful. Halifax is in the midst of a building frenzy, as one man told me the other day, “It’s the biggest fucking construction boom in this city’s history.” Pure, unadulterated craziness. Hungry hungry hippos unchained.
The city fathers and mothers (HRM councillors and the mayor) are trying to increase “density” in HRM by leaps and bounds. First there was the concern about housing for people from central Canada, especially the Toronto area, coming here to snatch up houses during the Covid pandemic. In the second quarter of 2022, 10,700 people moved here from other provinces while only 5,600 left NS for other provinces. But a year later, in the second quarter of 2023, more than 4,600 moved here from other provinces, yet the same number left for other Canadian provinces. Still housing prices have gone through the roof in NS, especially in Halifax.
Care workers earn $17-$24/hour
Now the governments are saying that thousands of immigrants from the Philippines and South Asia will settle here, happy to work as health care aides, elder care and hospital workers and in lower level service jobs. The problem is aides and personal health care workers earn from $17 to $24 an hour – not enough to pay the exorbitant rents in Halifax. Add to that the cost of living (one of the highest in Canada), the lack of family doctors, and the high cost of university tuition fees. According to The Globe and Mail,
“Nova Scotia students face the highest domestic tuition in Canada, paying 36.5% above the national average. International students pay more than double that…”
Add to that the fact that, except for a few select nationalities, you’re not going to find too many of a single ethnicity in what is still a pretty white-bread province.
If you build it, they may not come
Suddenly NS is not so inviting. Latest figures show that most new residents come here as non-permanent residents on work permits. Most newcomers prefer to go to Alberta to start out.
But HRM is not considering these facts. HRM councillors just want this city to boom and increase housing – never mind the rents of new and newer builds are off the charts, and few newcomers can afford them. And the federal government, with its “accelerator” fund, is simply encouraging profligate and unplanned expansion of housing stock. Some in Halifax have the idea “if you build it, they will come.” But it’s not necessarily so.
According to Jill Grant, Professor Emerita of Planning at Dalhousie University,
“Unless thousands of less expensive units come on the market simultaneously, new housing is more likely to increase local housing costs than to bring costs down.”
Grant cites a 2022 CMHC (Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation) report that
“suggested that building more market housing — at any price point — would ‘restore affordability’ as older units ‘filter down’ to other households. Filtering theory has been dismissed by housing scholars since the 1970s as evidence showed its ineffectiveness.
“Instead, studies show that new housing has the potential to drive up regional housing costs. In cities like Vancouver, a ‘teardown’ property — abandoned for years — was listed for $3.5 million in 2022. A new house in Burnaby cost $1.75 million in 2022.”
With all these new rental units coming on stream, who can afford to live in them? People from rural NS and other parts of the Maritimes who move to this city? They are looking for better access to health care, better educational opportunities for their older teens and better paying jobs –but wages in Halifax are not high. People coming from rural areas will not find affordable places to live, nor can those families easily afford Nova Scotia university tuition fees.
Bloomfield woes…
Bloomfield School has been vacant, half-boarded up, now fenced off, for a decade. Two days ago the news was that a CBC request under Freedom of Information revealed that at the end of 2023, fire inspector Dustin Garnett issued a report that outlined the dangers of the derelict structure. The two smaller buildings on the Bloomfield site, attached by pedways to the main building, are dangerous. Very dangerous, it seems.
In November 2023, Halifax fire inspector Dustin Garnett cited the lack of accessible entrances to the old school building; Halifax Regional Fire and Emergency declared it an “immediate safety risk”. HRM ordered the developer to conduct a structural integrity assessment, but Alex Halef at BANC refused. Note that both Alex Halef and his father, Besim Halef, principals of BANC, are both graduate engineers—and should know better. When, in a phone call, inspector Garnett expressed worry that a fire at the site could cause someone’s death, Alex Halef said he didn’t believe
“there was much risk of a fire, and that the building was built like a ‘brick shit house’ and he couldn’t see it being compromised.”
Halef then appealed the fire inspector’s order. Eventually Halef did come to some kind of agreement with HRM, and he dropped his appeal. Still, there was no question that squatters and people without homes stayed in the structure during the cold winter months. They lit fires –likely to keep warm and cook food. In fact in 2022, there had been a fire at Bloomfield but “due to unsafe conditions on the first floor we did not make entry,” noted fire prevention officer Larry Varin in an email.
At the Bloomfield site, there is no fire protection system, a roof/ceiling is partially collapsed and there could be problems with load-bearing walls. Halef had been ordered to keep people out of the buildings for safety reasons – but that would cost money. In 2014, when HRM was responsible for the building, it cost $175,000 to maintain security at the site for a year. In 2024, inflation alone would push the annual cost for security to $224,000.
Halef has been ordered to inspect the property for vagrants, and to make sure the property is secure – once again the place is basically derelict and no one seems to be looking out for safety inside and outside the buildings.
In fact, HRM had originally given Halef five years — now three years (until January 2026) –to pull up his socks and build something there – or else the city can buy it back. BUY IT BACK? At what cost? Is that a joke? These are unsightly and dangerous premises; BANC has shown little regard for safety or for any community concerns. Why should Halifax taxpayers – who used to own and maintain the school and its grounds — pay a cent for a property that was left to fall apart and remain unsafe –along with the developer’s broken promises?
BANC’s record
We need only look at what BANC Investments Ltd has built in the last decade and their plans for the near future. After reading their websites, here’s my chart:
BANC can afford to build, but can’t afford the $2 million to demolish…
Halef claims there is no money in his budget for the $2 million needed to demolish Bloomfield.
And what would he build on that site?
His track record for building affordable housing isn’t good. There is probably not one designated affordable unit in any of his apartment buildings or townhouses. Prof. Jill Grant says that true affordability means there should be a requirement of rents geared to 30% of household income. I don’t think that is something Halef – or any developer – keeps in mind.
Rents in Halifax are among the highest in Canada right now. Yet the median family income remains stubbornly low – at $71,500 per year. Rent in Halifax is at least $3,000 a month for a “family size” apartment or townhouse. At $3,000 a month, rent alone accounts for more 50% of the $71,500 median household income; if utilities are added it could increase that to 60% of income.
Then there is the problem of the living wage in the city. Halifax’s living wage of $26.50 per hour is more than a dollar per hour higher than Toronto’s living wage. There is a spread of $11.30 between Halifax’s living wage and Nova Scotia’s minimum wage (only $15.20/hr). Many employees in Halifax earn about $20.00 per hour.
HRM councillor Tim Outhit seems fed up with BANC which has already promised 6,000 plus units for another new development on Bedford Commons. Outhit noted “Just throwing money at the wall so we approve more units and hope that they sometimes get built, is not the answer.” He contends there has to be a “rationale check” on this project including looking at market capacity and the shortage of workers in building trades. (see ALLNOVASCOTIA.com-2024-04-10)
But as far as Bloomfield goes, as Outhit reiterates, BANC “didn’t have the money” to demolish the derelict and dangerous school buildings or develop the site in northend Halifax.
Yet HRM councillor Shawn Cleary said it was not HRM council’s job to even question what a developer does or does not do.
“That’s not our job. Our job is to say what kind of growth do we want where, we approve it, and then the market determines what gets built first,” Cleary said. “That’s the way it’s always worked.”
A mere three months ago, Cleary publicly announced he would not run again for council because he was convinced no one should be in elected office more than two terms. But now he has scrapped that idea and is once again re-offering as a candidate for HRM council –for a third term. As one commenter on social media put it “One can only hope he loses. I’ve said it before but he’s a petulant man child who thinks way too highly of himself.”
BANC is on a cloud…and a roll
BANC, like most developers in town, operate on a cloud all their own. Seldom criticized, rarely denied, and HRM council often acts grateful for their new developments. I wonder how many city residents would agree?
Alex Halef (left) photo by Derek Montague; Bloomfield School (credit Reddit).
Rent does increase whenever a rental unit turns over to a new tenant. But many landlords now refuse to sign even a year long lease, so that rents go up every six to nine months. Landlords often force tenants to sign these “fixed term leases” which means tenants are caught in a revolving door, with virtually no security of tenure. The Tory government helps the developers and owners as the previous annual 2% rent cap has been raised to 5% since January 2024.
Of course not all developers or landlords operate like this.
Perhaps the most galling issue is the fact that Halifax residents have to look at an eyesore along one of the city’s busier arteries. An eyesore that used to be a decent public amenity, a school and community centre for children and families is now a dangerous hellhole.
Below: photo of inside Bloomfield taken by fire inspector Dustin Garnett
And what about affordable housing for Bloomfield? As Prof Jill Grant put it, “Relying on the market to address the crisis involves misplaced optimism.”
NB:
For more on Bloomfield, the community and the other 2 Halifax schools sold to developers, see my post How Halifax Kills Community Spirit here.
Photo at the top: About a dozen people showed up for a demonstration in front of the former Bloomfield school site on Robie Street in Halifax on 8 Sept. 2023. (photo credit: Suzanne Rent, Halifax Examiner). Rent’s story that accompanies the picture is here.
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