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Todd [00:00:21] All right. This issue is, uh. Man, oh, man. It’s it’s it’s very, very, uh, I, I feel so badly for the residents of Ocean Breeze who are facing what they call demoevictions. Uh, joining me to talk about all of this is Celine Porcheron, president of the Ocean Breeze Residents Association. Uh, Celine did I get your last name okay?
Celine [00:00:45] You did very well, Todd. Thank you so much.
Todd [00:00:47] All right, so give everybody the background about Ocean Breeze, if you will, all the people impacted just because there’s lots of background here.
Celine [00:00:56] Definitely. So we were before the demolitions, There was 400 residents in the village and we all need to to to move at some point. So the the owners bought this place a couple of years ago, and we knew that their plans were going to be to demolish and to, you know, maybe put us in other buildings before they were to build or to demolish the other buildings. And that didn’t happen. And that was.
Todd [00:01:26] And that was promised, was it?
Celine [00:01:27] Oh, yes it was. And in the first meeting and a lot of people were there and a lot of people remember the first community meeting in November of 2022, where the owners, representatives, a gentleman from Cresco, said that they were planning to build before they demolished any buildings.
Todd [00:01:45] Okay. Cresco, is that a Canadian company? Is it? Where are they from?
Celine [00:01:48] They’re from here. They’ve built here before. Cresco.
Todd [00:01:51] Is that right?
Celine [00:01:51] Yeah.
Todd [00:01:52] Okay, so they had a community meeting back in November of 2022 and assured all the residents that they would construct other housing before they would go with demolition.
Celine [00:02:03] Absolutely. Because phase one.
Todd [00:02:05] Yeah.
Celine [00:02:05] And it did not require any demolition. It just it was an empty lot to begin with. So they planned to sell that first, which they failed to do. And the, the the buyers, whoever would have bought it would have built something for for housing there. And we as OBRA have been talking and in working with Tim Welsh Incorporated, who is a company that’s National who works with building social housing, and we’ve started the application to get some funding so we could build something for Dartmouth North, because there’s definitely a need. I mean, our vacancy rate there is 0.1%. So where we are going? So we approached the owners asking if we could build we could buy a lot. Once the funding comes through, if we could work with the government, buy a lot and build something that could maybe house some of our, you know, neighbors who who really have nowhere to go. We have a lot of retired, uh, neighbors. We have some, you know, families who just, you know, 3 to 4 bedrooms in my community. You’re not finding that at that same price anywhere right now. So we approached them with this and they they definitely they said, we do not want to sell to you. We do not want social housing. We might commit to, you know, the 20% of units being affordable. And we all know what affordable means. That means not affordable for most of us into whatever the developers build. But we all know that whoever they sell the lots to, those individuals will decide.
Todd [00:03:29] So Cresco will sell the lots.
Celine [00:03:31] The Cresco is part of Basin Heights, right? Basin Heights is is a real estate.
Todd [00:03:35] I see, so they’re the ones that own this lot?
Celine [00:03:37] Yes. Basin Heights and Cresco is part of that.
Todd [00:03:40] And I would think that they will develop something there, but certainly not something that’s going to be affordable and not something beforehand before the the renovictions that you’re going through.
Celine [00:03:50] Right. There’s already buildings down. So there’s already people who had to relocate within the village. They made sure to have fixed term leases on anybody that came in so they could evict them,
Todd [00:03:59] Get rid of them, ya.
Celine [00:03:59] And then move the people into those empty units.
Todd [00:04:02] Wow.
Celine [00:04:02] You know, so that was the plan all along. They weren’t very open about that either. And that caused a lot of disruptions in the community. It caused a lot of division, a lot of people, you know, a lot of people are very upset. So you have a lot of people on both sides of this issue.
Todd [00:04:17] Okay. So we’re talking about a thousand plus people that are that are residents here, correct?
Celine [00:04:22] Yes, absolutely. Many of them are children.
Todd [00:04:24] Many children. So so you talk about three bedrooms. What’s kind of the rent for? What’s the top end rent?
Celine [00:04:30] So I believe it’s about $1,400 plus utilities for the larger units. And for myself, I can say I pay under $1,100 for a three bedroom lower apartment with a nice backyard, which, you know, I know my I count my blessings.
Todd [00:04:46] Yep
Celine [00:04:47] I know I’m paying way below market.
Todd [00:04:49] Yeah.
Celine [00:04:49] But that blessing is also a curse sometimes because the buildings aren’t being maintained.
Todd [00:04:53] Sure.
Celine [00:04:54] Last year I witnessed a piece of roof. A big two by four comes sliding off. And then I saw my grandson come around the corner just seconds after it happened. Because, of course, you know, they want to see what happened.
Todd [00:05:04] Yeah.
Celine [00:05:05] So the buildings are deteriorating. They’re hoping that we all can move before any tragedy happens. And it’s very disconcerting.
Todd [00:05:12] What’s the timeline as to when they want to have all these buildings demolished?
Celine [00:05:16] See, I think that’s part of a big problem. So. So the first people had to be out. They’re already out. Phase two. Phase three. We’re told they had until spring 2025. And recently this summer, they were told they had to be out by the end of December 2024 because they were upping the demolition. Right. So they’ve relocated most of the people, but there’s no more room. And now they they have to. The last people have to move out of the village. They have no choice. But for the others, it’s all future phases. And that’s what I’m in. I’m in future phase. And that could be 2 or 3 years. Or if a big investor decides to come in and buy everything. I get three months notice you’re out.
Todd [00:05:59] Which could happen.
Celine [00:06:01] Any day, any day, any day.
Todd [00:06:02] So it’s living over your head every day.
Celine [00:06:04] Every one of us.
Todd [00:06:05] Yeah.
Celine [00:06:05] Not just mine. Every one of us. And you know, that can translate into a lot of issues. You know, I myself have been fighting this past summer. A lot of depression and had to go back on medication. I haven’t been on for decades because it’s just too much to handle this every day. Is it? Will it? Where am I going? What’s the answers? And nobody’s being open and transparent with us, you know.
Todd [00:06:27] Yeah. Well, the last thing, unfortunately, that I would expect from, from any of these people is transparency. Because they don’t have if they don’t have to, they’re not going to be. That’s very true. The sad part of it isn’t it?
Celine [00:06:38] That’s very true. Our group, OBRA, did meet with the owners in the early days a few times, and they were very, you know, seemingly open to want to work with us. And it just seemed to go nowhere. Eventually they made promises that haven’t come through. They offered $50,000 to the community to help support the community, uh, during these this transition and we just haven’t really seen anything come from that. They did build a few flower pots that didn’t really get maintained or grow any vegetables this summer. They promised to renovate the children’s playgrounds, and summer’s almost over. School’s going to start, and I haven’t really seen any evidence of that. And they even promised a new playground. And that hasn’t come.
Todd [00:07:22] All right, so and there’s a real community. I would think that over the years would have developed here. Right. This is these are people’s homes. This is people’s communities. Right?
Celine [00:07:30] I’ve talked to people last night, were going door to door with a petition that we’re trying to get to Minister Lohr to hear our song. And I spoke to someone last night. 28 years they’ve been here, you know, someone else is. I think it was 26 years. There are veterans here that lived here when it was when it was a housing for forYeah, yeah. And and there are families that grew up here. They grew up, their kids grew up here, and now their kids are living here and they have kids. So their grandparents now and my grandchildren live across the street from me 80m away. I am so blessed to be able to be so close to them. This is breaking up families. You know, there’s there’s some very sad stories out there that people are sharing and it’s difficult.
Todd [00:08:13] Okay, so of the thousand people that are going to be displaced at some point, there’s nowhere else to go. This is the other problem, right? Where are you? Where’s anybody going to? First of all, you’re lucky enough. Even if you’ve got a couple thousand dollars, it’s still hard to get money for a rent or somewhere. So if you’re on a limited income, which everybody probably is, what the heck are you going to do?
Celine [00:08:37] You know, that’s a very, very solid question. I mean, what are we going to do? They want us stay. In their last update, they basically asked us to get our affairs in order and find our own solutions before they find solutions for us. And now people are facing the rent Rent increases and they’re like, I’m sorry, why are we paying more? I need to save my pennies.
Todd [00:08:56] Yeah,
Celine [00:08:56] You want me out quick, but I need that money. Even if it’s, you know, a rent cap money, it’s still, you know, 50, 100, $200 a month that people can afford.
Todd [00:09:07] Yeah. Is there? So what are your what what are your expectations from government?
Celine [00:09:13] That’s a that’s an excellent question. I want to be seen I know my neighbors want to be seen too. I think that ocean breeze is often been like, you know, when I moved here, I realized that Dartmouth, you know, was seen sometimes as a city that you kind of drive through to get to Halifax. Nobody really knew where Ocean Breeze was. I spoke to people that lived here all their lives and never heard of the place, and, and, and now we’re getting seen and people are noticing. And I know that there is no solution for us today. We can’t stop these private developers. When when Premier Houston told us that there’s nothing they can do, right? It’s privately owned. There’s nothing they can do. It was really disheartening. So we we want to share that with them. They’re, they’re making decisions that give owners like this loan protection money or whatever. You know, they get money federally, they get money provincially. The city helps them. We want those people to be next to us, experiencing what they’ve decided was going to happen with this property or help decide, because as much as they each like to say it’s someone else’s problem, they’ve all been part of this. Nova Scotia hasn’t had housing in a long time. We’re trying to build it and we’re getting we’re it’s a slow process. We would like it to be a faster process, you know. So I invite them all to come. Premier, Premier Houston, Minister Lohr, um, we’ve had a great support from our MLA, Susan LeBlanc from Dartmouth North. She’s out there. She’s been out there since before, uh, before all these issues, knocking on doors, talking to people about what matters to them. And again, she’s coming this Friday with us in the afternoon with Susie Henson, the NDP housing critic, to go door to door with our petition because we want to be seen, we want to be heard, and we want to make sure that this doesn’t happen in any other communities, because this isn’t just an ocean breeze problem, this is an HRM problem. This is a Nova Scotia problem. And this is a Canadian problem. Canadiana is being taken away.
Todd [00:11:05] So when Premier Houston says, look, it’s private development. There’s nothing we can do. You don’t you don’t buy that. You think that there is things that are things that could be done.
Celine [00:11:14] Absolutely.
Todd [00:11:15] Okay.
Celine [00:11:15] It is the government’s responsibility because housing is a human right to legislate and regulate housing. And I do not think that Nova Scotia has done well by its citizens. We need to elect people that have concrete plans on how to fight this, because it’s happening to my community now. It’s going to happen to yours eventually. If you’re renting somewhere longer than five years, you have a target on your back. Yeah. Okay. That’s the way the housing market is.
Todd [00:11:43] Well, look at all the older buildings, right? And there’s a lot of older housing stock in the city. Out in Spryfield, where I live, I’m just everywhere you look around, there’s. And you know, developers are looking at these units and saying, we could knock that down, get everybody out and start over. Fresh new building. That’s like you said, that’s coming to a community near you if you’re in an old building.
Celine [00:12:08] Absolutely. Developers, It’s like giving roses to the government. Look, we’re going to build all this housing. Isn’t it great? We’re going to help you solve the housing market. But they’re building 1 to 2 bedrooms mostly. Right? And we are 3 to 4 bedrooms. Where are families going? It seems like HRM and the province does not want large families to live, at least in Dartmouth North, at least in Ocean Breeze. And I’d like them to say that, be honest with me. Don’t don’t give me political theater, because I know we all have to play that to some extent. But I want to hear our decisions led to this, and we are here to support you because this is horrible. They just come and let us be seen.
Todd [00:12:43] All right. So people listening right now who are moved by this and what’s your expectation or or what? What’s your ask from people listening right now?
Celine [00:12:52] We need support. We have a petition going around on Facebook. You can find us at the Ocean Breeze Residents Association group. Friends of Ocean Breeze are welcome to join. Uh, we need we just need support. We need people to come out and and come see our community, witness what’s happening. Talk to the neighbors. We’ve had people from Shannon Park who lived there years ago, and they also had connections with with Ocean Breeze. They’ve been coming around to see the destruction because it’s, you know, bringing back old memories for them. And it’s disheartening. We need support. We need the government to not let this subject go and not let this happen again. So my children and grandchildren will not experience the same kind of demolition.
Todd [00:13:33] Well, and the reality is, is that we see tent encampments. Uh, that’s that’s not out of the question for a lot of you people, is it?
Celine [00:13:41] Look, we’re surrounded by forests in Ocean Breeze. There have been talk about. Hey, you know, if we have to leave, just set up a tent. You know, the kids schools are there.
Todd [00:13:49] Wow..
Celine [00:13:49] And, you know, a lot of times, like, people have to move by October.
Todd [00:13:52] Yeah.
Celine [00:13:53] Right. And school starts in September.
Todd [00:13:55] My god, So you never thought you’d be dealing with that obviously. Who would? Right.
Celine [00:14:00] No, I never thought it would be to this extent. And to be fair, maybe I’m naive, but in the beginning, I really felt like the owners representatives were open to working with the community. One of the things I like to quote from the first meeting that the representative from Cresco said was, they they’re looking to win awards.
Todd [00:14:20] Goodness gracious.
Celine [00:14:21] And I saw that as an opportunity to build housing that perhaps might serve the community in a better way, maybe a better environmental way, a better social way.
Todd [00:14:29] Sure.
Celine [00:14:30] I was not right. It was a profit way. So.
Todd [00:14:33] Okay. Celine, I hope this did some good. Let’s keep in touch. Okay.
Celine [00:14:37] Well thank you, Todd. This was great. Thank you so much.
Todd [00:14:40] Okay. I appreciate it very much. Celine Porcheron, president of the Ocean Breeze Residents Association.