Atlantic Canada's First Street Newspaper
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If you think our enterprise is the kind you like seeing succeed, will you consider sending us a financial contribution toward our high operating costs? You can now make a secure donation to us from your online bank account to our email address: street.feat@ns.sympatico.ca. We would truly appreciate it! (All donors will receive a virtual subscription [PDF format] to our paper.) OUR MISSION STATEMENT: To provide a voice for the poor and needy; to educate and develop a critical conscience; to develop a community based solution to poverty and to generate income for those in need. You always want to know how you can help... well, now you can. Buy an advertisement in the next issue of Street Feat and support under-advantaged women and men in Nova Scotia. Your ad can be in full colour for as low as $30 for a mini business card, right up to a full colour one-page ad, and everything in between. Our circulation targets middle income individuals, the employed, and more than anything else, those who are concerned for the less fortunate, who will see in your ad a business that cares for the same people as they do. If unable to book an ad in the next issue, would you consider purchasing a subscription, for only $20 a year? Community Services A Portrait of Streets and Shelters |
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Editorial Contributor I've been in Joe Howe since I was 59, since I was poor despite two degrees. I couldn't afford the rising South End rents and simultaneously save money. Therefore, the 30% of my gross income subsidized rent was a good thing. I had been working selling Street Feat, the paper sold by and telling of the poor, while working as a crossing guard at the minimum wage. I also wrote for the Southender and occasionally out of town journals. Still I was struggling toward the end of each summer. I was also recovering from a relation with a woman that didn't lead to marriage. But over the last few years, as my income increased and my sense of security increased, I grew quickly as a person. I considered becoming manager here, especially as my book, Historic South End Halifax, became a near sell out. This position would protect my income a 30% levy. But I found the pay: a free apartment and five hundred dollars a month, an insult, although it is the industry standard for a hundred hours on duty per week. Meanwhile, we were unionized at the corner. Our wages doubled. Then I got the pension. These three things, the book, the unionization and the pension pushed my rent to more that $600.00 for a small one bedroom with out space for a kitchen table. There are other problems, besides the high rent for a small place at Joe Howe. Here there are a few social misfits, those who will attack, how will harass, who will intimidate. Metro has an obligation to house anyone poor so gets some misfits among the general good population of widows, whose husbands didn’t make a lot, or guys who had low paying jobs. Then, Saint Mary's University hired me to write part of their history. Now my rent threatened to go through the roof in an apartment that is worth no more than about $650.00. Therefore, again I applied to move to the John Hugh Mackenzie Coop on nearby Green Street where I'd pay just over $600.00 a better, slightly larger one bedroom with no increase no mater how much I earn. But Mackenzie is not easy to get into. First, you must get an interview, then convince the board that you’re the one. There are apparently a number of apartments free as the management has been in flux, so if I get an interview, I have a good chance of an offer. The coop is not perfect. There can be problem people there too. The coop, however, expels those who slip through the screening, unlike Metro Housing, whose criterion is chiefly income, not income and personal suitability, and Metro tends to move the problem to other manors, being so loath to expel. My leaving of Joe Howe will mean losing a number of friends, losing a very familiar environment, and unfortunately, will mean the end of Joe Howe News. On the other hand, I feel I've outgrown social housing so want to try another humane, less bureaucratic form, less financially rigid form of accommodation: the nonprofit coop. We have he sad duty of announcing the passing of our former employee and volunteer, R.I.P. December 28, 1962 - August 21, 2010 Her next tasks included typesetting for the contractual production of the NS Gazette and to act as advertising sales representative for a publishing venture of ours, The Northern Post. Her last duty was as Volunteer Office Assistant, where she interacted with our vendors, clients and readers. Diane battled cancer for the last five years. Our sincere condolences to her sister Anne Marie, son Joey and family and friends at large. (Look for our current issue.)  |
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Last Updated on 18 - IX - 2010