Colby Cosh: Disabled man solved homelessness with trailer home. The government would have none of it

No doubt everyday journalism has lost much of its power to shock the conscience in a world in which everyone’s a victim one way or another. But I unexpectedly found my hackles still functioning when I read in Nova Scotia’s ancient Chronicle Herald about the predicament of Robert Antle, a resident of Upper Stewiacke.

Antle, 60, is too sick to work and qualifies for welfare with a disability top-up. He lost his apartment last year and moved into a large trailer with a sympathetic friend. The friend was building a house on the property, and when he got it habitable in November, he agreed to rent the entire trailer, which has a wood stove and an electrical hookup, to his disabled pal.

I know that paragraph is an unusual thing to find in a Canadian newspaper — a little good-news story, that is, about someone in peril of homelessness who found a creative, affordable, appropriate solution. Needless to say, the authorities wouldn’t stand for it.

When Antle exhibited his rental agreement to the Community Services department, according to reporter Andrew Rankin, he was told that while Nova Scotia had been happy to cover his rent for a permanent apartment, and would have been delighted to pay for him to live in a “mobile home,” his new digs are technically a “travel trailer” and thus ineligible for rental assistance. Antle’s welfare cheque was cut instantly in half — reduced to the meagre “essentials” rate that Nova Scotia pays the homeless, who don’t, after all, have rent or mortgage obligations.

Few of my readers, I suppose, have ever had the adventure of living in a trailer. The first home I remember, back in the 1970s when my family was striving to lift itself onto the property ladder, was a trailer quite a bit like the one Antle has. He’s got it up on blocks, as we did ours, and it’s fairly far into the boonies, like ours. He’s got a plywood porch like ours. Before my parents scraped up enough to afford a down payment at a time of exorbitant inflation, we didn’t learn any distinction between a “mobile home” and a “trailer”: either word could just as well describe our little tin can.

This verbiage was introduced — as a marketing device, by landlords who wanted to charge more for a trailer lot — not long after we moved up in the world. So that’s one reason the Antle story caused a red mist to descend on my vision: how did this marketing contrivance find its way into government policy? If someone who relies on the welfare state for rent is content to save money living in a shelter stigmatized with the old-fashioned appellation of a “trailer,” why should he be punished for that? A province should be willing to pay a disabled citizen to live in an appropriately furnished cave or a well-engineered treehouse if he can find someone to rent one at something resembling a market rate.

Old-school trailer parks seem to have vanished from the urban landscape in much of Canada (with due respect to Ricky, Julian and Bubbles), and naturally I sometimes wonder if this is part of our perpetual metropolitan housing crisis. Edmonton, to be sure, doesn’t really have such a crisis — but, then, the trailer park of my childhood is still there on the distant outskirts of Alberta’s capital. It’s full of pickups and SUVs that suggest it’s still affordable housing for the working class, or maybe just for Albertans who want more truck than house.

Did we discourage the existence of trailer parks because they’re notorious for being disorderly and dangerous? (No thanks, Ricky, Julian and Bubbles!) We have tent cities in public parks now instead, I suppose: that doesn’t seem like a trade-off anyone should be proud of. I’m pleased to add that Robert Antle convinced his Conservative MLA, Larry Harrison, to visit his home, to agree that it was a home and to raise hell with the Department of Community Services.

The department sent Antle a couple months’ back rent this week, but warned that it hasn’t made a formal decision to support him permanently. I mean, if they decided to be more flexible about letting people find affordable housing, who knows what might happen?

National Post
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