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North End property values are on the rise. Photo: Holly Gordon

Geraldine Parker has lived in her two-storey yellow-panelled house on Maynard Street for 30 years. She loves the street she lives on, having raised her five children there and feels she's developed a connection with the community over the years.

"It's a quiet area, my neighbours are friendly, and people are trying to keep their homes up, renovating and stuff, planting -- to make their homes look nice," says Parker. "I love it here, and if I won a million dollars I wouldn't move."

But Parker says a rise in the cost of living has put a strain on her budget. One of those costs has been the rise in property tax, fuelled by the rapidly increasing price of real estate in the area.

The assessed value on Parker's property rose from $105,700 in 2003 to $119,700 in 2005, an increase of 13 per cent. The proposed assessment value for 2006 is $141,400.

Parker says she receives assistance from the province to help cope with the rising value of her property. But she still worries it may be too much.

Parker says that when she and her husband first bought their house on Maynard Street in 1976, the neighbourhood was considered a poor area. They bought the house for about $26,000.

But the cost of houses has risen considerably in Halifax's North End. Just down the street, a real estate company is trying to sell a house for almost $450,000, a price Parker finds "unbelievable."

"You know, Maynard and Creighton [streets] were considered ghetto," says Parker. "Who ever thought that in this day in age it would cost that much money for a house?"

Though a $450,000 house in the North End is uncommon, according to reports from the Nova Scotia Association of Realtors, there's been a 48 per cent increase in the average sale price of a house in Halifax's North End in the last four years.

"The price went up all over the city due to demand," says Jean Chapman, a real estate agent for Royal LePage. She says there were fewer listings on the market as well, which helped boost the price of real estate.

Changing community

Geraldine Parker says she wouldn't leave her home even if she won a million dollars. Photo: Tor Sandberg

The North End has traditionally been a working class neighbourhood with a mixture of older homes and small businesses such as auto repair shops. The Gottingen Street area is home to some low-income housing. Houses in the other areas in the central region have fallen into disrepair. The community is more affluent north of Young Street.

Parker says she's noticed the composition of her community changing as more affluent people move in to fix up older houses.

"I find there's a lot of young people," she says. "Lots of young professionals with two jobs."

Capp Larsen, a member of the Halifax Coalition Against Poverty, says the cost of living in the North End is being fuelled by regional council's encouragement of condominium development, that has attracted wealthier residents and businesses. This has lead to gentrification - a phenomenon in which wealthy residents move into a community and refurbish it, often resulting in the displacement of people with low income.

Despite the gradual gentrification of the North End, Larsen says that the process need not negatively impact residents with low income.

"It's important when talking about gentrification that there are a lot of positive things that come out of it," says Larsen. "Things get fixed up, and there's access to more services like banks."

Larsen says her organization wants "to make sure that positive things come out of any type of improvement to the area." In so doing, the Halifax Coalition Against Poverty wants developers to "devote 25 per cent of units to affordable housing." The coalition has also lobbied the province for rent control, because Nova Scotia has none.

"There's no security for someone who's renting an apartment in Halifax," she says.

So far, Parker's been able to get by on her husband's pension as well as some government pensions, but doesn't know if she'll be able to stay in her house if the cost of living continues to increase.

"Knock on wood so far I've been holding my own," she says. "It would be a totally different story if I didn't have [my husband's] pension."

"Sometimes I look around and think to myself: 'I live alone, maybe I should sell this place.' But then I think to myself there are too many good memories here, I'm happy here, I don't want to move."