This article first appeared on saltwire.com.
Every shelter in the tent city in Halifax’s Grand Parade holds a human story: of misfortune and bad luck, of the plain hardness of life, of the steely resilience of people with their backs against the wall.
The tent Matt Grant and Steve Wilsack share is home to a different narrative.
Grant, who is 51, and grew up in Woodstock, N.B., is a commissionaire who once minded the entrance to One Government Place, the nerve centre of the Nova Scotia government.
Steve Wilsack, 61, was born in Stellarton but has worked in faraway places as a globe-trotting film production health and safety officer.
The pair have a vague family connection: Wilsack’s wife knows Grant’s sister. Until two weeks ago, they had only met in person once or twice.
But Grant walked past the Grand Parade homeless encampment every day on the way back and forth to work. Wilsack “had seen poverty all around the world” and watched the homeless situation “grow out of control in the province that I love.”
A people’s movement
Both, furthermore, felt the need to give back: Wilsack because of a pair of heart procedures he has received, for which he “remains eternally grateful to the people of this province,” and Grant due to his own precarious financial situation “that leaves me one paycheque away from being here,” meaning the downtown Halifax homeless city.
And so, two weeks ago, the two virtual strangers left their families, threw up their own tent in the Grand Parade, and got to work.
At first, their goal was modest: as Grant put it, “to be able to better understand people’s individual needs.”
But something has happened there, in the shadow of Halifax’s City Hall, where the pair’s actions have in Wilsack’s words, blossomed into “a people’s movement to help the unhoused.”
It began with a small action: finding some mattress pads to get those in the tents off the frigid ground, then providing food and support as the temperatures dropped.
As SaltWire colleague Andrew Rankin reported earlier this week, Grant and Wilsack soon found a new way to protect the homeless from the elements: by replacing some of the encampment’s tents with 14 heavy, bright red ice-fishing shelters which now stand in the downtown almost as a rebuke to the apparent indifference of the city around them.
‘A tsunami of generosity’
Wilsack dipped into his own pockets to pay for the first few shelters which, with the cost of bedding and flooring included, retail for about $300 each.
As word of their good deeds spread, others have stepped up in what Wilsack calls “a tsunami of generosity.“
People want to help: Volunteers have arrived from as far away as Cape Breton and the Annapolis Valley. Others have donated cash — by Wednesday afternoon their GoFundMe campaign had topped $22,700 — and bought shelters outright (another six are ready to be erected with more to follow).
The selflessness isn’t limited to individuals. Companies have donated insulation. Just Monday, a generator arrived from Star Power Atlantic.
Every little bit helps in a crisis as deep as this one. As Rankin reported, the city’s numbers show that more than 1,000 people are homeless in the HRM and more than 200 are sleeping outside.
Just last week, a father of two was found dead at a homeless encampment in Dartmouth.
Government’s actions so far seem to lack the urgency that such a situation demands.
The first provincially funded tiny home community, which is being built in Lower Sackville, will have 52 units and provide housing for about 62 people. It is expected to be complete a year from now.
Two months ago, the province announced that it is spending $7.5 million on 200 single-room pallet shelters for people living rough. The provincial Department of Community Services has not said where the shelters are going and when they will be ready for people to move in.
Enough is enough
People elsewhere are fed up with government inaction on the issue. Just this week, the municipal council of St. Stephen, N.B., citing a “lack of response” by the New Brunswick government, declared a state of local emergency over community homelessness, after a death in a public space came to light in an emergency council meeting.
Grant and Wilsack also say enough is enough.
“Living in a tent is inhumane,” Wilsack said. “Everyone — governments, ordinary citizens, community organizations, businesses — have to come together to create a new playbook for this that simply isn’t there yet.”
Their grassroots effort is a “call to action,” Wilsack told Rankin, to work together to solve the problem.
