N.S. government partners with home-sharing website

The Nova Scotia government has struck a two-year funding agreement with a non-profit website intended to help match people looking for a place to live with property owners who have extra rooms in their home.

The government is giving $1.3 million over the next two years to the home-sharing web platform Happipad.

The money will go toward the cost of two employees based in Nova Scotia and to waiving fees renters would otherwise be charged for background checks and homeowners would be charged for processing transactions. The arrangement took about eight months to finalize.

"It's sort of the 21st-century version of the sticky note on the Superstore or the grocery store wall," Housing Minister John Lohr said in an interview on Friday.

"It's not for everybody, obviously, but for those who this will work for we hope they take advantage of it."

'Affordable housing is kind of everything'

The website works as a sort of matching service: people who own a home with an empty bedroom can register and people looking for a room can do the same. Background checks and a series of questions help the website safely and securely match people who are likely to be compatible.

Once an agreement is reached between two parties, the website generates the necessary documents to make things official and it handles the financial transactions.

People sign fixed-term leases that normally range between one and 12 months, although a spokesperson for Happipad said some people make arrangements to stay longer. All agreements are required to follow Nova Scotia's Residential Tenancies Act and shouldn't be subject to the kind of sticker shock some people are seeing in the rental market, according to the spokesperson.

"At our core, affordable housing is kind of everything," said Justin Hartling.

"It is, obviously, all watched and we make sure that, you know, we're not getting to the point where somebody is charged what a full one-bedroom [apartment] would be for basically just a room."

130,000 empty bedrooms

Statistics Canada data show there are about 130,000 empty bedrooms in the province and Lohr said that creates opportunities in the midst of the province's housing crisis.

Hartling said the website, which already has a presence in B.C., Alberta and the Toronto area, typically caters to students, refugees and people moving somewhere for work who don't have time to set up a permanent place to live before arriving or who are in a place temporarily for work.

The site can also appeal to seniors living alone in a home that has additional space or people simply looking to make extra money by renting out a room. Lohr said the COVID-19 pandemic caused a lot of people who used to rent rooms in their home to stop the practice, and he's hoping this system might convince them to start again.

"We had committed as a government to do every possible thing we can do and this is one small part in the housing solution," said Lohr.

"Clearly it's not the only solution. The only real true solution is to increase supply. Is that going as fast as we would like? No, it's not going as fast as we would like."

Housing strategy coming after Preston byelection

Lohr's government was supposed to deliver a provincial housing strategy in the spring but missed that deadline. The minister said recent wildfires, flooding and the byelection in the district of Preston all created delays in the strategy's release.

The minister said the document is ready to go and will be released after the byelection is complete. Election Day is Tuesday for Preston voters.

"Ironically, we continue to work on it and tweak it, so it's continuing to be adjusted as time goes forward."

Hartling said the deal with Nova Scotia is the first official arrangement the service has struck with a provincial government and a focus will be placed on educating the public about the service and the opportunities it presents.

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