Sign away his son or be homeless: Single dad struggling in St. John's housing crisis
CBC
A St. John's man on the brink of homelessness is facing the possibility of losing his son due to a lack of housing options for people with kids.
Tristen Keats, who turns 27 this month, lives with his mother and his three-year-old son, Jacoby, in a small basement apartment that is advertised for only one person.
"Here we are now with people living on the side of the street in tents," Keats said. "Me and him are just about there now, right? We got a couple months."
They are running out of time as his mother's landlord has given them a few months to find a new place.
He and his son are among the many people caught in the housing crisis that is sweeping across the country and hitting Newfoundland and Labrador. Social housing and emergency shelters are in high demand, leading many people to take the only home they've known for months — a tent — and station themselves in public spaces around St. John's.
And if facing homelessness is tough, when children are involved, the struggle can be worse.
According to Abbey Quinlan, the Employment Services Lead at the Single Parent Association of Newfoundland and Labrador, the demand for their services, especially their food bank, is rapidly increasing.
"I think it's significantly, significantly impacting them," Quinlan said. "Because, again, they're trying to do and provide the same amount of services and resources to their kids as two people sometimes are."
Keats said he's come a long way in life, and his situation now threatens the progress he's made in his personal recovery.
"I was on drugs, drinking, you know, I didn't give my mother a very good life. I didn't have a very good life for myself because of myself," he said.
At 17, he became a father for the first time, but said he was far from ready for that responsibility. At 18, he was homeless.
When Jacoby was born three years ago, Keats said he worked hard to sober up and take care of him full time.
"Before Jacoby, I didn't really care about anything. I didn't have a life. I just lived to exist. And now that I have Jacoby, I live for him," he said.
The new owner of Ontario steelmaker Stelco says his company "will not disappoint the people of Hamilton and Nanticoke," where the business's major facilities are based.
A Winnipegger is warning others about an intricate scam she says she almost fell for.
Fort William First Nation is opposing a planned redevelopment of the Ontario Power Generation's (OPG) 117 year old Kakabeka Falls Generating Station, which is located in their traditional territory.
A building that sits at the corner of Sussex Street and Brunswick Avenue has had many lives over the last century — being a church, a school and offices. Now it's set to become housing, at a time when the city sorely needs it.
A Waterloo, Ont., elementary school principal will be sentenced in the new year after pleading guilty to child sexual exploitation charges following a joint investigation that involved the London, Toronto and Waterloo police services.
Students at UPEI have let their student union know what they want from the province this fiscal year, and those priorities are reflected in a 2024-2025 advocacy document brought to the legislature on Wednesday.
Larger communities in the N.W.T. will soon see a boost in their territorial funding to maintain infrastructure and deliver services — like water and waste management — but the increase still falls short of what communities need.
The toxic drug crisis has taken more than 47,000 lives in Canada since 2016 and the synthetic opioid fentanyl has become a household name. But now, what's believed to be an even more potent class of synthetic drugs is showing up in drug busts across the country: nitazenes.
The Liberal government and the NDP have agreed to introduce a two-month GST vacation on certain items before the holiday season, Radio-Canada has learned.
Veterinarians are warning Londoners to make sure their dogs are vaccinated and keeping clean after a deadly virus outbreak was declared in London this week.
Registered nurses rallied in St. John's Wednesday as part of a week-long convention, again calling on the Newfoundland and Labrador government to create permanent solutions to staff shortages and workplace violence.