For 27 days, Robert O'Hearn has been living in a Sydney, N.S., hotel.
The 78-year-old’s Whitney Pier apartment has been unlivable since Fiona hit.
‘Water poured in and came down through the ceiling, and all the ceilings in my lower apartment at the street level collapsed," said O’Hearn, who added he also lost all of his possessions.
O’Hearn has tried to find somewhere else to live, but says his pension prevents him from qualifying for seniors' housing. He's been offered to stay at a local homeless shelter, but says that would be temporary.
O'Hearn gets around with a cane and walker, and fears he'll have no place to go in the dead of winter.
“The only place for me to spend the night would be on the sidewalk," he said. “And by morning, and I don’t wish to be melodramatic, but I’d be laid out dead.”
For O'Hearn, his stay at the hotel has been extended by the Red Cross until Jan. 3.
He's received a couple of offers to stay in peoples' homes but what he really wants is a new place of his own.
“If there’s any help out there and someone’s got a hut to rent, I’d be delighted to move in," he said.
O’Hearn is just one example of a housing problem that still impacts many even a month post-Fiona.
Recently, the Nova Scotia government provided the Red Cross with nearly $1.4 million to cover hotel costs. The Red Cross says the fact it's still providing lodging for nearly 100 people in the Cape Breton Regional Municipality alone speaks to a lack of housing.
"The housing crisis is real and it's not just in Cape Breton - it's in every part of the country," said Dan Bedell of the Red Cross. "Ninety-seven people who are in hotels, and we do have some that are in one of the residents' buildings at Cape Breton University."
The Red Cross says it still has close to 200 people in lodging throughout Atlantic Canada since Fiona.
