John Sullivan has a pension but can’t find a suitable place to rent for himself and his dog, Muffy.
At most, he can afford $600 in rent and that does not provide him many options, forcing him to live a peripatetic life in Hope.
Sullivan initially lived in a six-person tent at a campground in town. He paid almost $100 to live in his $200 tent, “and it held everything I owned which wasn’t a lot, and me and my dog.”
“I couldn’t find any place else to rent,” he said.
Sullivan said water pooled around his tent in the three to four months he lived there. He lived there up until the winter.
This winter, he moved into a trailer measuring about 25 feet long, costing him $500 in rent. He finally has a roof over his head, a kitchen, a bathroom and a fridge — except none of these work.
Sullivan said the pipes supplying water broke, which forces him to collect jugs of water, which he stores under his table. The furnace in the trailer does not work, which forces him to use two electric heaters. The stove does not work either, forcing him to use a hot plate. His fridge works, but it freezes everything.
“The whole trailer is leaking, last winter, I almost froze,” said Sullivan. “The walls were only about an inch thick.”
Sullivan said his space heaters only brought the living space “close to warm.”
“If it got too cold, I got under the covers in the bed,” he said. “I got to be careful on the plug-ins. If I plug one too many things in and the heater starts up, it shuts all the power off.”
Sullivan said he is not receiving his full pension, and said he has his federal and provincial representatives fighting for it. Asked why, he said the government likes to keep as much money as they can.
“Consequently, if you don’t get up and fight for it, you’re lucky if you get it,” said Sullivan. “I got hold of every office I could think of, and now, finally they’re paying a bit of attention.”
He now has another problem — the property he lives on has been sold and he has to go by mid-May. Sullivan is currently trying to find a place that fits in his budget, but if he does not, he has a last resort.
“Muffy and I have actually lived on the street for several months,” he said.
Since the publication of Sullivan’s story on April 27, he told The Standard on Wednesday that he has found a place.