"Mommy, I don't want to sleep up there anymore."
Hailey's neat pony-tail bobbed as she pointed to a bunk of a tent trailer she and her parents live in, then turned her attention back to picking her favourite colour crayon from a cup on the tiny folding kitchen table.
Choking back tears, the three-year-old's mother Jenna Canning hugged her tightly and tried to explain that she wanted better for her too but they had no where else to live.
"I'm so depressed," said Canning glancing around the cramped quarters of a tidy 15-foot-long travel-trailer, borrowed from a friend's mother to provide a temporary shelter for the family of three, which needs to be returned to its owner in three days.
"I cry all the time."
For three years Jenna, 23, her husband Mike O'Connor, 28, and young daughter have patiently waited for word from the Eastern Mainland Housing Authority that their application for low-income housing in Pictou County had been processed.
Knowing eviction from their New Glasgow apartment was imminent because they missed too many rent payments; they contacted the authority around the first of September to find out how much longer they would have to wait for assistance.
The couple claims they were told by authority officials there was no record of their application and they would have to reapply and be placed on a waiting list again, which could take another three years.
"We sat in there and the lady helped us do up the application," said Canning. "Now, we are completely terrified we are going to lose Hailey, if Children's Aid comes in and takes her. We have nowhere else to turn."
She said if they don't find help somewhere they will end up living out of the family's car, a Dodge Neon they have been selling parts off of for a few extra dollars.
They said during the past three years they lived "here, there and everywhere around the county" and were evicted a number of times for not keeping up with the rent.
The young couple has canvassed family and friends hoping someone could take them in but most have their own hardships to cope with leaving them in the cold.
"It's spiralled into a huge emotional wreck for a lot of people," she said. "Everybody that we know would help us if they could, but they can't."
When the couple originally applied to the authority for help they were living on social assistance benefits. O'Connor is certified in five trades (auto body repair, private investigator, line cook, security guard and forklift operator) and found work as a tire checker at a local garage where he worked for two years until he was laid off last December as business declined.
O'Connor was told by Community Services they didn't qualify for assistance because be is receiving Employment Insurance benefits, which end in about five weeks.
He has sought help from Career Connections to find work and claims to have sent out hundreds of résumés but cannot find a job to support his family.
Canning has also been upgrading job employment skills and has been applying for work without success.
The couple's borrowed accommodation is parked in the small front yard of Canning's mother's two-bedroom mini-home in Sylvester already occupied by four people.
A heater takes the chill out of the night air and it has running water to wash dishes and a stove to prepare meals with food received from the local food bank but there have been some frightening situations when nature called.
"There were actually two coyotes fighting in the yard one night," said O'Connor, adding there have also been bears in the area as they ran to the nearby house to use indoor plumbing at night.
He said is frustrated and angry their application for low-income housing has been lost and is devastated by the lack or response from organizations and government departments he contacted for help.
"We are considered homeless living in this (trailer) so we are not considered a priority," said O'Connor. "We have to be in an apartment for them to help us."
"Just because they can't find a copy of an application they helped us fill out, that is not our fault."
The provincial Community Services website said people are given priority if they are a victim of family violence, their home has been condemned or if they need to be near a hospital.
Calls to the executive director of the Eastern Mainland Housing Authority, Nadine Fraser-Bates, were not returned on Monday. Calls to the office of the Minister of Community Services Denise Peterson-Rafuse were also not returned on Monday.
