For Immediate Release
July 6, 2023
NDP Leader Jim Dinn (St. John’s Centre) is renewing his call for the province to take meaningful action to make housing more affordable and accessible to the people of the province. Government continually fails to address the housing crisis causing countless people to experience homelessness. Chronic homelessness has doubled in a year from 86 in May of 2022 to 175 in May of 2023.
“Government cannot continue to ignore the crisis in housing that they have left unaddressed for years. The trend of people experiencing chronic homelessness in St. John’s doubled within a year,” said Dinn. “Safe and affordable housing isn’t a luxury, it’s a necessity. The province needs to move away from subsidizing the development of market housing and focus on ensuring that people in this province are housed and supported.”
NDP MHAs have raised concerns about the housing crisis happening in their districts across the province throughout legislative sessions, by petitioning the government to acknowledge the crisis and play a serious role in addressing the problem. Most recently, Dinn called on the Minister of Digital Government and ServiceNL to improve rent controls in the province. Previously, the Minister indicated: “there continues to be no observable benefit to implementing rental rate control”.
“I have multiple cases on my desk of constituents, many are seniors, who have faced multi-year increases with no relief. In one case, tenants were notified that their rents would increase by 61.07%. These realities are being ignored by government,” said Dinn. “The reality is people are facing with ever increasing costs of living and stagnant wages that have not kept pace. Government can’t continue to look as access to housing as a measure on its own, there’s a bigger picture of affordability that they need to understand. But that would take work, and I don’t think that interests this government.”
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For further information, contact Stephanie Curran, Media Relations Manager, NDP Caucus at 330-0328 (c), or stephaniecurran@gov.nl.ca