Housing runaround

I applied for housing back in the summer, and have just now been contacted and told that I’m being added to a waiting list. I thought I’d been placed on the waitlist long ago, but no. Apparently it takes six months just to be added to the damn waiting list. What has my application been doing for six months??? Sitting on someone’s desk, collecting dust? Then my landlord tells me that my power bill has to be completely paid off to be accepted, and my cat must be fixed. Where the hell am I supposed to come up with all this extra money to pay hundreds for a procedure I don’t want my cat to have to go through anyway? She’s only a kitten, and I would rather wait to have to get her fixed when she’s older. This is unfair to expect of low-income people. Landlords need to stop telling people how to live. Also, all the best locations with housing are designated for seniors and for families. Single people get the shittiest buildings in the worst areas with gunshots and drugs. This is age discrimination against young, single people. Metro Housing is run by a bunch of morons who don’t know what the fuck they’re doing. How are people supposed to survive in this town? It’s pretty bad when a 40-year-old person has to move into a single room, with a single bed, shacked up with five college students in one apartment. When are the municipal politicians that we voted into office going to do something about this serious issue in HRM?
—Homeless in Halifax

This article appears in Dec 26, 2019 – Jan 8, 2020.