Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I do not have the detailed breakdown with me by community of our allocation. I can tell you that for this current year, we are spending about $2 million on our EDAP program. Some of that money is for repair as well as new units. Probably about $500,000 of it is for repairs, which are done in all of the communities. The remaining amount is done for new house construction. Thank you.
Debates of March 4th, 2002
This is page numbers 301 - 340 of the Hansard for the 14th Assembly, 5th Session. The original version can be accessed on the Legislative Assembly's website or by contacting the Legislative Assembly Library. The word of the day was housing.
Topics
Item 19: Consideration In Committee Of The Whole Of Bills And Other Matters
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Anderson
Item 19: Consideration In Committee Of The Whole Of Bills And Other Matters
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Item 19: Consideration In Committee Of The Whole Of Bills And Other Matters
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March 4th, 2002
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Michael McLeod Deh Cho
Mr. Chairman, in the year 2000, the NWT Housing Corporation did a needs survey and since then, has been flogging affordability. However, in the majority of the communities in the North, affordability was not brought up as an issue, yet that seems to be a big issue for the NWT Housing Corporation.
It concerns me where this is leading us. It concerns me by discussions that I hear happening in this House as to the trends that we are starting to develop. We no longer recognize market disruption. We are starting to fund projects in the larger centres that we never funded before.
At the same time, the smaller communities have been stating over and over that they do not have enough houses. Maybe we should be looking at the adequacy of units in the smaller communities. There are many units that were built over the years that should never have passed inspection. Units that were built under the HAP program, the SHAG program.
We heard one of the Minister's staff say that the EDAP program spends money on repairs. At the same time, you failed to say that there is a policy that does not allow the NWT Housing Corporation to spend EDAP dollars, or any repair dollars, on any units that were built by the NWT Housing Corporation. Ninety-five percent of the houses in our communities were built by the NWT Housing Corporation. It is not a real fair picture that we are seeing here.
I think we should be talking about the lack of units in our communities. How many have no running water? How many need repairs? How many passed inspection? I am not sure how. I have units that do not have insulation in the floors, no insulation in the ceilings, units where the ceilings are full of bats. However, we do not get that attention and we do not seem to have programs to address it.
I would like to ask if that could be something that we could look at, the NWT Housing Corporation to look at. If they could tell me that from now on, affordability is going to be the priority. Is the Housing Corporation as we know it going to start changing their investment plans?
We know the dollars are shrinking. However, as we open up the investment portfolio, so to speak and go into Yellowknife, Inuvik, Hay River and Fort Smith where there is a market, where there are developers, then we are not going to see a change in our smaller communities.
My question is will we see some focus in the small communities rather than the larger centres?
Item 19: Consideration In Committee Of The Whole Of Bills And Other Matters
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Roger Allen Inuvik Twin Lakes
Thank you, Mr. Chairman. There are several points that I would like to respond to in the Member's question. First of all, I think it is coming upon the Housing Corporation to tighten up on our construction contracts. That seems to be an inherent problem in our smaller communities. We feel that it is the direction that we need to go to ascertain our level in the design build in our smaller communities.
Talking from a political perspective, we need to broaden our mandate to put more thrust into what we see as an alternative solution in the context of the universal partnership agreements.
Allow the smaller communities to take the lead role. We come in as funders, as advisors, as public educators, so that they do have, if the community desires, more units. Then we work with them to find methods of which we can reduce some costs.
Again, the question of time lines; yes, we need to work closely with the communities, monitor the construction periods a little more closely, provide ongoing support to those community developers. There is a whole range of direction here that we need to pursue.
Again, our ambition is to ensure that communities feel they have input. The problem that we understand in terms of migration -- I am not sure of the Deh Cho, but we know from the outlying communities in the Mackenzie Delta/Beaufort, there is a great migration into the town of Inuvik for a number of reasons.
We heard from the Member for Boot Lake, for instance, that there is a great demand for student housing. We are cognizant of all the impacts. It varies from community to community. Thus, we are trying to address them all. Unfortunately, we have to find different ways to deal with it. Certainly we do take these points at heart and we will continue to lead a discussion on how we can better our approach to putting houses on the ground in the communities, whether it is public housing or private housing. Thank you.
Item 19: Consideration In Committee Of The Whole Of Bills And Other Matters
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Leon Lafferty North Slave
Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I would like to have a grey area cleared up for me. I understand when the Housing Corporation guarantees loans or approves clients for home-ownership, I am not sure how it works, but someone builds a home for them. Are the clients given the choice as to who builds or what kind of unit they are going to get, what they are going to pay for it? Some of these people are paying for it for 25 years. I am just wondering, what options do they have when they have been given approval for funding or support out there? Thank you.
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Roger Allen Inuvik Twin Lakes
Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Being specific, if a client qualifies under the EDAP and accepts EDAP programming then he decides who designs or builds for him, providing it is 50 percent or less of the contribution. Under that IHP, the NWT Housing Corporation then funds that, so that is again totally our responsibility.
Before I get into too much in-depth on the response, I am going to ask the president of the NWT Housing Corporation to elaborate a bit further on this question. Thank you.
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Beaulieu
Thank you. I guess again the policy that we have in place right now is that EDAP is considered to be something that in many cases the majority of that is funded by the client and that individual has the option to pick the contractor themselves, decide on what type of unit will be built and then we assist the individual in securing the contract to make sure that all of the regulations are in place to ensure that the client is protected. Under the IHP program where we pay 100 percent of the capital we simply use the process of either community partnership or public tender to get those units built.
Item 19: Consideration In Committee Of The Whole Of Bills And Other Matters
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Leon Lafferty North Slave
Thank you. Under the programs where the NWT Housing Corporation pays all the costs, do you negotiate the contracts most of the time in the smaller communities because of the lack of resources out there or if it is the winter road season can somebody else come in and do that work for them?
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Roger Allen Inuvik Twin Lakes
Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Historically we used either process. Either we did a negotiated contract with the community development corporation or in some cases where there was not a local community corporation or development company, we tendered the projects. That is the substance of the question, yes, that is our reply. Thank you.
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Leon Lafferty North Slave
Thank you. Just on the same thing with contracts. A couple of my constituents have come to me and they have said to me that they were not given a choice when a home was supposed to be built for them and they were told that the local LHO was going to build it. I am not sure if this is a cost savings for the client or a cost savings for the NWT Housing Corporation, but can the Minister look at some of these clients and see if maybe they were treated unfairly?
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Roger Allen Inuvik Twin Lakes
Mr. Chairman, certainly we will endeavour to do that although the concept is to put the ownership housing development back into the community, therefore you will see a number of different methodologies employed throughout the system. We have heard from other Members here that we need to put more investment back into the community and allow the community to take control and full responsibility, therefore we promote universal partnership agreements. In other words as well, project authority agreements have been used to facilitate local housing developments. We are aware that there are problems cropping up every once in a while, but the main thrust is to ensure that the communities have some input and control over how we put housing developments into those communities. Thank you.
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Leon Lafferty North Slave
Thank you, Mr. Chairman. It is good to put the ownership back into the communities if it is working for the public. I would just like to use a few examples. I remember five or six years ago when the programs were taken over by the local LHO, training and the employment was great. Employing people is great, but there was also supposed to be training and trying to put apprenticeship programs in place. That was one of the reasons or a few of the reasons and affordability was one of the reasons. More local control of who gets help and the reason that it was put in local control was they knew the people, they knew who needed help the most or supposed to have anyway.
It seems to me that we are getting away from all that when in some of the communities that I have been around and asking questions I have been finding out there is no training at all, there are no apprenticeship programs out there. The employment is happening, that is good, but at the end now I see that the client is the one that is paying the most. The client is paying for outside contractors coming in and doing the electrical, the plumbing and all the specialized work. That is still happening. The local control was not supposed to create a trades position and getting people out there to create trades so that one day they can maybe be self-employed. That is not happening. Why is it not happening? Are they not expressing it enough in their agreements that that is what the agreements are all about? Thank you.
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Roger Allen Inuvik Twin Lakes
Thank you, Mr. Chairman. That is one of the key areas we had discussed with several communities in terms of trying to develop maintenance men, electricians, oil burner mechanics, technicians. Again, getting back to the core of the question, we need to revisit those agreements where there are areas that are lacking. Again, expressly, we do not want to be seen as stepping in to control the way they develop and support their community businesses. That is not our intent. Our intent is to ensure that our programs are delivered equitably in those communities.
Aside from the political elements of that agreement, we need to continue to provide support to the community and I think that is the thrust of our agreement that we as a corporation need to facilitate through some process, the ongoing program delivery that we so support. Thank you.
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Leon Lafferty North Slave
Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Yes, the objective of taking control if it was working good would be great. Buying supplies from a local contractor is one of them and this is one area where I did talk to one of the local suppliers that is going out of business now because he is not being supported by the local companies. This government gave this guy help to become a supplier and now another arm of the government is not supporting this guy. It is just like the northern manufacturers. The same thing happening there. We are not supporting something that we built in the first place. Thank you.