KJIPUKTUK (Halifax) - Parrsboro residents Shannon Kieler and John Tyler are facing a bleak Christmas. There is no wood for their woodstoves, and their pantries are empty. They worry that soon the duplex they share will be gone as well, and that not too far into 2016 they will both be homeless.

After an informant called the Amherst Community Services office, Kieler was cut off social assistance in October of 2014 for hiding her supposed cohabitation with Tyler. Tyler’s application for assistance was denied just a month after that.  

Both Kieler and Tyler vehemently deny the allegations. They believe the accusation came from somebody who holds a long-time grudge against Tyler.

Their misery is real enough.

“Once a week I visit the food bank,” says Tyler. “And neighbours give me food. I can’t run the propane stove anymore it costs too much. I might be allowed one tank of oil this winter through the Salvation Army. That’s a month of heat.”

Tyler has been able to hang on to the duplex he bought, but believes that some time early in the new year missed payments will catch up with him, and he will lose the house.

Shannon Kieler’s situation is equally dire.

“I worked all summer painting,” Kieler, who shouldn’t work at all because of a back injury, tells the Halifax Media Co-op.   “Now I have carpal tunnel right up into my shoulders. It’s very painful, but I have to eat. This is all I can do to survive.”

Tyler and Kieler are adamant that their relationship is one of landlord and tenant. They say that at one time they were romantically involved for a brief period, but that was well over ten years ago. Now they are just friends.

For privacy reasons, Community Services will not say who the accuser is. But Tyler is confident that he knows who that informant was anyways. Parrsboro is a small town of about 1,300 people. Everybody knows everybody else’s business.

Tyler doesn’t believe that the informer contacted Community Services out of a sense of civic duty. Long-time grudges against Tyler are what triggered that phone call.   

It seems that Community Services did not treat the tip with the scepticism Tyler feels it deserved.  It’s as if only evidence that appears to support the informant’s accusation was considered, he charges. Any evidence to the contrary was ignored.

Some of the evidence Community Services unearthed is rather flimsy.

Community Services, in its case against Kieler, mentions an Eastlink cable service and phone that are shared between the two.  They also share a post office box. Tyler received one water bill for both units. At one time Tyler added Kieler to his car insurance as a secondary driver.

And exhibit no 1, there is a door that connects both apartments.

But such things don’t make you a couple, both Kieler and Tyler argue. A genuine couple’s financial interdependence goes way beyond that. We’re talking shared credit cards, shared everything.

“Living in a relationship of interdependence functioning as an economic and domestic unit,” is how the regulations describe it.  

They’re not a couple, say both Kieler and Tyler. It’s just that people who live in poverty look out for each other, especially if they happen to be friends. Take the shared Eastlink account. ““It was a deal where you get that many hookups for the same price,” says Kieler.  “Why wouldn’t we take advantage of it?”

Also, that Eastlink business happened six years ago, Tyler says. That arrangement simply doesn’t apply to the current living situation.

The shared car insurance was so Kieler could drive to a distant job she had at the time. The car died a long time ago. The water bill was a remnant of an arrangement made with the town by a prior owner.

Most importantly, real couples live together. They don’t live in separate halves of one duplex. Affidavits of neighbours and friends all say that Keeler and Tyler are not a couple.

There was a time Community Services agreed with that. The department conducted what Tyler describes as an extensive investigation in 2010, and found Keeler to be an independent single person. Three similar determinations were made on a yearly basis after Keeler moved into her half of the duplex in March 2012.   

But none of this swayed Community Services. An Income Assistance worker paid Keeler a visit in October 2014 to investigate the informant’s tip.

“That case worker was not  happy person,” says Keeler. “She is very stern. She starts questions. She asks me about water bills, I had no idea what she was talking about. She caught me off guard, She didn’t want to look upstairs in my bedroom, bathroom, anywhere, except the laundry room where the door is that connects the the two apartments. That door was locked, as it always is.”

“The next thing I know I am cut off and accused of cohabitation,” says Kieler.

At the time Kieler was on Paxil, an anti-depressive, and when her assistance was terminated she no longer could afford the medication. “They forced me to go cold turkey.I went into a rage that scared the bejeezus out of me. I was out of control. It was horrendous,” says Kieler.

Next, community Services went after Tyler.

A back injury prevents Tyler from working in his old job. He wanted to take a course in property management, start his own business and remain independent. He applied for social assistance around the same time Kieler was cut off, and was denied.

Because, Community Services insisted, Kieler and Tyler were a couple.

Over the last year both Kieler and Tyler have been fighting the decisions, but to no avail.

One thing that complicates the appeals is that Kieler had no legal support when she fought the initial charges, and had no insight in the water bill arrangements between Tyler as landlord and the Town of Parrsboro. Kieler’s case is pivotal to both her own and Tyler’s predicament, but no new evidence can be introduced during the appeals.

Community Services receives information on a regular basis from members of the public, writes departmental spokesperson Andrew Preeper, although not all information provided leads to an investigation.  

“It is not uncommon for members of the public to report inaccurate information to our staff.  As an example, they may report someone who is working believing they have failed to report the income to the Department – when in fact they are reporting the income on a regular basis,” Preeper writes.

“Because not all information is reliable, staff review the matter to determine if a more thorough review is required.  I can assure you that the Department does not make any decisions based only on the information provided by informants,” says Preeper.

But you should be able to see the accusation, argues Tyler.  However, a Freedom of Information request by Kieler resulted in a document with all the informant’s accusations carefully withheld.

“They use informants that lie. And it doesn’t matter that they lie because you never get to see it, says Tyler.

“It’s one thing to use informants but I should be allowed to answer to their accusations. I don’t care who the informant is, I want to see the information he gave.”

Homelessness, for both Kieler and Tyler is a very real possibility in the not too distant future. To have the power cut off (again) is just around the corner.

Kieler has been told to make arrangements to repay the department the money she received since October 2012. That’s $18,000.  

And Tyler also is in very bad shape.

“I lost my credit rating. I lost my credit cards. I had to get rid of my car. I am not able to take my courses,” says Tyler.  “I am so far in the hole now, I don’t know if I will get ever out of it.”

Corrections: Income Assistance workers are not typically social workers. Social workers require a social sciences degree and are registered with the Association of Social Workers. We incorrectly used the two terms interchangeably.

Shannon Kieler did not at Oxford Frozen Food this summer. Rather, she worked as a painter. 

Kieler and Tyler were never accused of being in a common law relationship. The proper term we should have use is cohabitation.  

See also; I never lied. I always did what the department told me to do.

Click here for additional articles on Nova Scotia's Income Assistance system.

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