Thank you very much, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, many of the people who haven't gone in to the local office are, in fact, low-income people whose rents might go down or at least stay the same. However, they are upset and angry and are very frightened to go into the Iqaluit housing authority office, it seems. Another indication of their anxiety is that rent payments have also dropped this past month by 30 per cent over the usual levels. The Iqaluit housing authority is over $20,000 short of rental income this February, compared to last year.
Some people have apparently given up paying any rent at all. This is a big problem. Unless there is some flexibility shown, especially for these low-income earners, I fear we will end up with many lower income people in Iqaluit having sizable rental arrears because they were afraid to go into the local housing office to find out about their new rent. They got so spooked by notice of the new maximum rent payable on their unit, that they are afraid to go anywhere near the housing authority office.
When I see the obvious confusion and fear in many of my constituents -- many of whom approached me over the weekend -- I wonder about the fairness of the process the NWT Housing Corporation has followed. First of all, the Minister says that the corporation needs to give only one month's notice because these units, unlike government staff housing, he says, are subsidized rental units. So, the corporation, probably the largest landlord in the Northwest Territories, is therefore exempt from the requirement faced by all other landlords in the NWT to give three months notice of a rental increase.
Secondly, is this really notice of a rent increase? Not the way I see it. The notice my constituents received only says that the maximum you may pay for your unit is increased. For people who are expecting to find out what their new rent will be, all they are told is that there will be a new process, taking into account all the income from a household, which will let them know what their new rents will be.
Mr. Speaker, the third big problem emerging is that elders don't like the rent scale. Many of them are feeling that by not being asked to pay any rent, their contribution to the household is not valued. The result is that working children in the family will have to pay even more than if the elders were still paying rent. Elders have traditionally made very good efforts to pay their rent. Now they are being spared from having to pay any rent but they still feel some obligation to get their working children to pay, even though the elder will be forgiven from making any rent payments.
Some children in some families are now refusing to be assessed and refusing to pay the new rents. Tensions are increasing in these families as a result. This family upheaval is exactly what had been predicted and feared in community consultations in the Baffin this past summer.
The last problem I see is that it has still not been worked out how the new tenant agreements will be set up. Whose name will be on the lease? I understand each person will be told what portion of the rent is theirs to pay. But if one person in the household pays, but another doesn't, who will be evicted? Is the good tenant in a family evicted, along with the one not paying rent? Is the elder who is not required to pay rent evicted along with the rest of the family if his or her children or grandchildren refuse to pay rent?
Mr. Speaker, I hope that the Minister of Housing can provide clear solutions to these problems soon. Thank you.
---Applause