In October 2022, Dorothy Shephard, the social development minister of the day, told a crowd in a Saint John gymnasium the government would spend $102.2 million to build new public housing for the first time in a generation.

"Significant cost-of-living increases, combined with a housing market boom, has contributed to an unprecedented demand for public housing units," Shephard said at the event. 

"I don't know how we can't say there's a crisis."

But three years later, less than a third of the promi…