After searching for nearly a year, no suitable housing has been secured
A Carleton County mother with a disability and three children living at home faces homelessness at the end of the month after spending nearly a year trying to find suitable housing.
If nothing changes, her only option after Sunday, Aug. 30, will be to pitch a tent on her oldest son’s property.
The River Valley Sun is not identifying the woman by her real name because she is concerned her children could face harassment if her identity becomes public. Janet is a pseudonym being used to protect their privacy.
Janet has lived in her current home for more than a decade. Following the previous owner’s death, the property was sold. Letters also began arriving stating she had to leave by April 30, 2026, and Janet said she began searching immediately. However, those letters were not formal eviction notices. In June, she received the formal eviction notice requiring her to leave by Aug. 30.
Her search comes as New Brunswick’s subsidized housing waitlist has more than doubled in recent years. According to the New Brunswick Auditor General, 13,129 households, representing 21,712 people, were waiting for subsidized housing as of Dec. 31, 2024. Of those, 6,775 households had been waiting at least two years. In March 2021, the waiting list stood at 5,710 households.
One barrier, according to Janet, is a sum of money connected to a previous marriage.
“They say I still owe $1,300 that my ex-husband owed from my marriage 20 years ago,” Janet told the River Valley Sun. “I offered to try to make payments.”
She maintains that she was told the amount would have to be resolved before NB Housing could provide her with a unit.
“Sometimes they’d get back to me,” she said, “and sometimes they wouldn’t, but even when they would, there was still no help.”
Other options have also fallen through. At one point, a house became available that Janet believed could accommodate the family. She said NB Housing later told her that approximately $4,000 in work would be needed to bring it up to fire-code requirements, including sprinkler-related upgrades, and that the cost would not be covered.
Another possibility was a one-bedroom apartment. Janet was prepared to let her children have the bedroom while she slept on the couch, but she was told the arrangement would not meet housing requirements.
Janet has also looked outside government housing. When the River Valley Sun met with her, she had a full page of names and contact information for local landlords and property owners. That morning, she had called everyone on the list again, but still there was nothing.
Adam Bowie, a communications representative with the New Brunswick Housing Corporation, said demand for social housing is considerable and there is currently a waitlist for placements. Applicants are assessed based on housing needs and programs that may be available to support them.
“When one of our units becomes available, we review the waitlist to identify those with the highest needs and who are seeking housing in that area,” Bowie said.
He added that applicants in crisis may sometimes need to consider housing over a larger area to increase their chances of finding a unit.
Janet has also sought assistance from the Office of the Ombud, Bill Hogan, MLA for Woodstock-Hartland, and Outreach New Brunswick.
On Aug. 27, Janet said Outreach may have found another possibility.
“They said they had one that might be available for about $1,800 a month. They wanted to see if it fits the criteria.”
At press time, Janet had not heard whether the rental could move forward. She said Alyssa Stairs of Outreach had contacted her again and said she had been unable to reach NB Housing.
Stairs said Outreach could not provide information about a specific case, but confirmed the organization had reached out to Janet this week and was working with her.
The River Valley Sun also reached out to MLA Hogan for comment. At press time, no reply had been received.
With Aug. 30 approaching, Janet is preparing for the possibility that she and her children may have to live in a tent on her oldest son’s property.
She said she is also concerned that being unable to provide suitable shelter could result in Child Protection Services becoming involved.
After nearly a year of searching, Janet said she still does not know where she and her children will be living after Aug. 30.
