This article first appeared on halifaxexaminer.ca.
It’s been 76 days since Steve Wilsack and Matthew Grant first decided to hand out mattress pads to the residents living in tents in Halifax’s Grand Parade.
It was Nov. 16 when Wilsack, who works in the film industry doing everything from health and safety to location scouting, was working on a film downtown when he looked up at the tents in the public space between City Hall and St. Paul’s church. Wilsack said he can still recall his reaction to seeing the summer tents set up in the mid-November cold.
“Sheer horror,” he said.
Wilsack sent a text to Grant saying he had 60 mattress pads and wanted him to help him hand them out to the residents. But that wasn’t enough. Wilsack and Grant organized to purchase ice fishing shelters, which would be much sturdier and warmer. Wilsack said he found those shelters while out shopping one day. He now works with the company that makes them on group buys, getting discounts on large purchases so that other encampments can have shelters, too.
While those red shelters have saved lives of residents at Grand Parade, they also have come to symbolize the emergency of the housing crisis in the city and across Nova Scotia. Wilsack and Grant are just two Nova Scotians who are working in encampments — Wilsack calls them villages — to help the residents. A group of volunteers are working with the residents of a sanctioned tent encampment in Lower Sackville. Another group of residents in Annapolis Valley have purchased shelters and set up a warming centre in Windsor.
Wilsack said he gets calls from people and mayors in other cities, like Summerside, P.E.I. Gatineau, Que, and Saint John, N.B. He said he gets support from HRM, too.
“Mayor Savage has been extremely cooperative. I’ve been working with the city from day 1,” Wilsack said.
“At one point, they tried to close this down and I went in and talked to the mayor immediately, I had an appointment with him, and he said he had to make sure people are okay.”
I met up with Wilsack at the Grand Parade on Wednesday at 9am. It was a quiet morning and the snow that fell on the city Monday was trampled down with footprints. All around Grand Parade people were busy, heading for work, paying for parking spots, or working on new condo developments along Barrington Street.
A security guard with Jolcar Security Services was sitting in a car. Wilsack said they hired security a couple of months ago to keep residents safe. Perry, a worker with the municipality, is at the site, like HRM staff is every day, cleaning up. Wilsack said he and residents help out too, so they can “keep being good neighbours.”
The red shelters are grouped together and surrounded by some fencing and gates. A white banner with SOS spray painted on it hangs from one of the fences. Another group of tents is set up around the cenotaph that was built in 1929 to honour those who died in the First World War. A sculpture of a grieving Britannia, representing Nova Scotia’s mothers whose children were killed in the war, watches over the shelters.
Within the first 15 minutes of meeting Wilsack, he gets calls from residents to help them restore the heating in their tents. A couple of former residents stop by saying they’d like to come back. One of the residents was in the hospital and said they were handed a tent from hospital staff when they checked out.
Wilsack has his own tent at the site, and for the first month and a half, he and Grant worked on shifts, so at least one of them would be at the encampment at all times. Wilsack has a van on the site, too, where he keeps supplies, meets with residents, and occasionally takes a nap.
He carries around gift cards from Tim Hortons and McDonalds in his jacket pocket that he hands out to residents. He gives out about $200 to $300 worth of gift cards each day.
The red shelters are 36 square feet inside with a wooden pole in the centre so the roof won’t collapse under the snow, a zip up door and windows, and small ventilation holes. Two adults can stand inside of each one, and Wilsack said the shelters are large enough to hold a cot. He said there is still a demand for shelters in Grand Parade.
“If we had 50 more tents, they would be filled,” he said.
This encampment was one of the first to get heating for the shelters. Wilsack put in a proposal with HRM to get heating for residents, and he used his film industry contacts to track down the right equipment, which was donated by William F. White and Star Power Atlantic.
“It was a game changer,” Wilsack said. “It saved people’s lives.”
Wilsack has seen the comments online in which people say the residents of the village should just move to the shelter at the Halifax Forum that was opened by HRM, the province, and 902 Man Up last week. Wilsack said it’s more complex than just asking residents to move.
“We’re an advocate for housing first. Housing first isn’t putting somebody in a shelter. One of our residents described it best in that going to a shelter is like going to jail. It’s wide open, there’s no privacy, no security. There’s rules and restrictions,” Wilsack said.
“It would be the equivalent of asking everybody to leave their home to go to a place where everybody could watch you sleep. The village is their home.”
Housing first is a concept Wilsack researched when he started working at Grand Parade.
“I went online and quickly realized in Finland they showed that by getting everybody inside, people can start to deal with their issues and challenges,” Wilsack said.
“I also learned there is hope and people need a hand up, not a hand out. I’ve learned that the people who are in the encampments, that’s us. They’re wonderful people and this is a community just as much as it is going into the south end of Halifax.”
There have been concerns about safety at the Grand Parade village. In December, one of the residents died from a drug overdose. Three other residents escaped a tent fire that same month. There was another fire just last week.
But only two of the residents moved to the Halifax Forum shelter. This village is a community and residents feel safe and supported. Wilsack said some of the residents have jobs, but just can’t afford the high rents in the city. Still others have addictions and mental health challenges. People, he said, need second chances.
“What I learned is we need to create small, little steps for everyone so they can graduate. Ninety percent of the residents in all the encampments, they just need a place to stay. Some need help with addictions,” Wilsack said.
“Some people need mental health wraparound services, but the majority of people need a place to go. That’s the scary part about it.”
Wilsack said he met with government officials earlier this week. He said while they listened, there’s still no action.
“I think the wheel is too big. One of the main reasons we’ve been successful is we’re innovative, we’re agile. The government has a challenge. They have to allocate resources, but I said from day 1 with all of this, this problem is not going to be solved by the government,” he said.
“This problem is going to be solved by you and I, it’s going to be solved by community groups, it’s going to be solved by businesses, and it’s going to be solved by all levels of government working together. And that’s a new way to work. That’s how complex this is.”
Wilsack said people can help by volunteering at the village or just stopping by for a visit. But he said there’s more we can do.
“The other part is we need to lobby our provincial government and our federal government to get more funds to put into housing,” Wilsack said.
“We have to realign our values, we have to realign our thought process. If we don’t, we’re going to have an onslaught of more unhoused, and this is spreading right across the country. It’s coming to a town or city near to you.”
Grant shows up to the village later in my interview with Wilsack. He said he met Wilsack through family connections. Wilsack helped Grant find work and housing when he and his family moved to Nova Scotia in August 2021.
“I don’t think I’ve bonded with someone so quickly as I have with Steve,” Grant said.
“Matthew is the brother I never had,” Wilsack said.
I asked if anyone from St. Paul’s Church has reached out to help, considering some of the shelters are just steps away from the church’s front doors. Wilsack and Grant said they haven’t spoken to anyone at the church, but they did get donations from another church in the city. They added that St. Paul’s did provide meals to some residents.
Grant has his thoughts, too, on what needs to be done.
“It’s not what people need to know. It’s what people need to do. What people need to do is come down to these encampments and get to know the people. It’s not as easy as herding all the people to the shelter. Shelters are from the 80s,” Grant said.
“We really need to retool how we think. Let’s have people who want to invest in humanity.”
Grant said “people deserve shelter, period.”
“If it wasn’t for the donations, if it wasn’t for the kindness of Nova Scotians, we would not be here. People want to solve this. The bottom line is it’s solvable and it has to be done by everybody,” he said.
