Bernard lives in a Borden-Carleton home with his two teenage children. Currently unable to work due to a lingering injury, he is getting by with help from social assistance.
Last spring Bernard applied to the provincial home improvement program that is administered by the Department of Family and Human Services. The program assists low-income or disabled Islanders in conducting necessary repairs to their homes.
Bernard qualified for a grant of $6,000, the maximum annual amount for someone with no permanent disability. He hired a contractor, put in a new fuse box and raised and started repairs to the second floor.
However, during the course of the work the contractor discovered both mould in the second-floor walls and severe rot in the floors. They repaired the floor, but the mould cleanup was not part of the original budget and they ran out of money.
Bernard's contractor has given him an estimate of another $16,000 to clean up the mould and fix the leaks that caused the problem. It's money that Bernard doesn't have. He cannot access the required credit from a bank and is left facing a winter with no insulation in the majority of his second floor.
"I've got two kids. We can't stay here — we'll freeze to death," said Bernard.
He had originally appealed to the province to help him cover the additional cost of the renovation, if only to make the house livable.
However, he has been denied.
A spokesperson for the Department of Family and Human Services would not comment directly on Bernard's case, citing privacy concerns, but did provide some background information.
They stated that the home improvement program has been accessed more than 900 times since 2013, costing roughly $4.7 million. The program's budget was increased in the last budget by about $250,000 to $1,361,500.
The fund is replenished annually and has closed for this year but will reopen again in April 2017. Bernard will have to wait until then to apply for further funding.
If he's still in the home at that time, he will probably do that, he said, but it is this winter he's worried about.
He currently has the property listed for sale and is looking for some place to rent in the meantime, but he can't afford to pay both rent and mortgage. He's also been unsuccessful to date in finding a home that would allow his kids to stay in the same family of schools.
