New Glasgow, N.S., mayor says homelessness, addiction are getting worse

New Glasgow, N.S., is struggling with homelessness and mental health issues.

Homelessness is seen as a big city problem, but towns across Nova Scotia face the same struggles.

In New Glasgow, people are living on the streets, in shelters and in forested areas.

“I contend that COVID changed the world, and it certainly did change what homelessness and unhoused and mental health and addiction looks like for our community. It certainly isn’t getting any better. It’s getting worse and it’s by the day getting worse,” says New Glasgow Mayor Nancy Dicks.

Community members say it goes beyond just homelessness; it’s mental health and addiction. They say there’s open drug use and drug paraphernalia throughout the town.

“We see people injecting themselves with I am not sure what, but just on the streets, on the stoops of businesses, really anywhere they can. We had a bench on my property and we had to take the bench away because people were laying on it and injecting themselves on the bench. People sleeping everywhere, carts everywhere, needles everywhere,” says resident Kyle Lees.

Lees moved to New Glasgow from the Niagara region of Ontario four years ago. His plan was to start a family in a quiet community but he says this is far from what he expected. He started volunteering with local community groups to clean up encampments and in 2023, he started to document what has been happening in the community.

“I started just documenting and sending those kinds of things to town officials, provincial officials. And then in the last two years I have been pretty active talking with town officials, provincial officials, part of committees, and trying to get the word out, and try to advocate for some change,” says Lees.

Dicks says she often get calls about community concerns surrounding this issue.

“With unhoused people, unhoused folks, it’s not as simple as they just don’t have a place to live,” Dicks says. “There are so many challenges that come with that. We have seen an increase in addictions and to take that to another level is what we are finding is the toxicity of our drugs.

“We’re involved in a wastewater study that has brought in alarming results of what we are finding in our wastewater, which is a good indicator of drug supply. That is of course alarming and concerning. So you can’t talk one without the other and it’s not a one size change that works for everybody, it’s complex.”

“We should be able to have open correspondence with the community, public officials and the shelter rather than diversifying into a compassion fest, or you have no compassion or whatever. We all have compassion but compassion with consequences is important,” says Lees.

Jodie Dudka delivers packages to residents throughout New Glasgow. She says around the Viola’s Place Shelter her customers say they constantly have packages stolen.

“I have also been noticing a lot of destruction and where I deliver to people, packages have gone missing because of the shelter here in town. The addiction in town I see them unfortunately shooting up needles,” says Dudka.

But it’s not just around the shelter where Dudka has seen activities she deems concerning.

“I’ve seen people almost naked walking around. It’s very, its disturbing,” says Dudka.

“I am from Ontario so I might be able to see what the trajectory could look like. I am concerned for the community. This is an incorporated town so we can’t be turning away property owners, we can’t be turning away investors, we can’t be turning away businesses,” says Lees, who notes he’s concerned for young families.

“We are looking at properties elsewhere. We talk about it constantly. There was talk of possibly coming here to raise a family and get more involved in the community. And the way things are, we are looking at other places for that. Not that I want to run away from the problem, but I may not be here in the next 24, 48 months.”

Dicks says part of the solution could be a 24-hour recovery facility

“There are complications to how people access those services. One of the things that through the committees that I have sat on and people that we have brought in to sit on talking about how do we move forward with this, the comment we hear continuously is the lack of a 24/7 recovery facility and you know not having that makes it really difficult to go the next step,” says Dicks.

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