Opinion by Murray Mandryk • Leader Post
Dominika Kosowska was invited by NDP to Monday's question period to tell the story of her rat-plagued Saskatchewan Housing Corporation apartment.
The sound of scratching in the walls in her Saskatoon apartment is one that Dominika Kosowska never heard in her previous homes in her native Poland or when she lived in England.
It’s a sound most Saskatchewan-born people blessed with the luxury of a quality home don’t have to live with, either. Most of us don’t have to worry about mice and rats in the walls or bats in the attic.
Unlike Kosowska, most of us also don’t live in Saskatchewan Housing Corporation units — some 3,000 of which now sit vacant in this province in various states of disrepair like the fourplex on Regina’s Retallack Street that blew up 10 days ago.
The disconnect here is staggering.
A bad public housing strategy has clearly caught up to this Saskatchewan Party government.
This is not a good look for an administration that recently boasted the best population growth in any quarter since Statistics Canada began tracking numbers — growth, largely driven by immigrants like Kosowska, who is still reliant on SHC housing after eight years in Saskatchewan.
Yet the government clearly wants to push the perception that it takes care of those settling here for a better life, through support of charitable programs like Dress for Success.
It further revels in the notion that “our resources belong to everyone in Saskatchewan, so everyone in Saskatchewan should benefit” — as Premier Scott Moe recently reminded us in that letter you’ve likely received that accompanied your $500 affordability tax credit cheque.
Multis e gentibus vires — From many peoples, strength — is our provincial motto.
But does everyone benefitting mean handing the same cheque to everyone? Or does it mean truly offering real opportunity to people like Kosowska who have come here to contribute?
After 15 years in office, this Sask. Party administration still struggles with the notion that the right spending choices are usually the harder ones. Spending more to fix SHC units would be direct investment in immigrants like Kosowska the government boasts it is attracting.
But, sadly, too often these people are viewed as little more than background fill for feel-good news announcements, rather tha n people who need a little support … like an affordable home free of mice, rats and bats.
“I got stuck in this place because relocation is not always an option,” said Kosowska, invited to the legislature by the NDP Opposition in Monday’s question period. “For myself as an immigrant single mother, I spent the past seven years building the safety net within the community where I live.
“I don’t have family here. I don’t have any support. For me to relocate to the other side of the city, I have to uproot my son’s life. All friendships. All of my support network. It’s not as simple as you say.”
Kosowska said SHC offered her another unit across town, but that means an added cost of gas to get her nine-year-old to nearby Prairie Christian Academy or for working with her clientele in her work as a trauma counsellor specializing in domestic and sexual violence and intergenerational trauma.
“The moment I leave that apartment, someone else will be put in that apartment,” said Kosowska.
And, such as it is, she has to make her rodent-infested apartment her home. “They call me neighbour mama. It’s very hard for me to leave that neighbourhood,” said the former teacher. “I have been surrounded by children my entire life.”
So Kosowska has instead become an advocate for other immigrants living in her building — many of whom struggle with English or don’t have Internet access.
For now, it’s back to the business of sealing and plugging holes, setting snap traps for the mice, rats and the occasional bat. “It’s never boring in there, you know,” Kosowska said.
But it would be better if government made a few better choices.
Mandryk is the political columnist for the Regina Leader-Post and the Saskatoon StarPhoenix.
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