At the bottom of these letters there’s an actual paragraph that says that if you’re not satisfied, here is the appeal system that’s involved in ECE. Here’s who you can contact. You’ve got only so many days to contact them in order to launch your appeal, and it must be in writing.
But with the Housing Corporation — at least, the last letter I looked at — it just said: please be advised that your application was received, and due to your particulars you’ve been refused for the program.
It’s not only appealing a negative letter, Mr. Chair. There are also issues with people being previously in arrears. It’s well known that we’ve had many, many clients in arrears. What’s happening there is that the arrears are based on…. And they’re very old too. One should ask that question — how old the arrears are — but they stem back sometimes even up to ten years or more. It’s because clients at that time weren’t satisfied with the product. They didn’t sign any agreements, and they disputed the type of work, the level of work, that had occurred.
So that issue is ten years old, and today their need is that their house is getting worn down. It needs repairs; it needs some new shingles; it needs some exterior work done. A lot of it is interior work as well. But as soon as they approach the Housing Corporation, because of our new guidelines and procedures, they’re denied any assistance because they’ve got existing arrears — and rightly so. If somebody did make a commitment to make a repayment because of a program or loan and they stopped paying it — and in this case it’s certainly a clear violation of an agreement, where someone is not doing their part — it should be subject to some kind of penalty, and that’s certainly the case.
But in the Housing Corporation’s case, Mr. Chair, I think that if you look back at some of the disputed things, they just kind of sat on the books. They
were never really addressed, so people aren’t satisfied and they’re not making payments. They say: I’m not paying until this is resolved.
I think that an appeal system, as well, will help sort this out, because the denial levels are coming and it’s clear that they’ve got arrears. The Housing Corporation keeps saying no, they’re not entitled because they’re in arrears. But if we try to work backwards and try to resolve these arrears….
For a lot of it the Housing Corporation does have to take the blame. A lot of the constituents I speak to in this particular area are saying they don’t think they got full value of, for example, a $20,000 repair program that they’re entitled to, to repay. But now the Corporation is saying that it’s now $25,000 of arrears. They have shown some flexibility there, Mr. Chair. They wanted to roll it into any new repair program, but constituents and clients are saying: “Well, look, I wasn’t happy with $20,000 worth of work; I think there was only $10,000 worth of repairs” — which is true, in many cases. If you research it, many programs got started, but they never finished because of contractors not finishing their work previously, or else they weren’t qualified or they just left the smaller communities altogether.
I think that if we work towards this appeal-type structure, it will go a long ways in addressing many, many of our concerns. For me, I’m getting frustrated enough. I like to do the old diamond jubilee kind of approach, where you just forgive everybody’s debts and say let’s get on to making new and affordable houses for everybody, and let’s start from scratch, because that seems to me the only way to do it.
But there are other ways — you know, restructuring the Housing Corporation to have this type of system in place where somebody can sit down with the Housing Corporation and have an open dialogue instead of just a door slam: Sorry, arrears; sorry, you’re left out. In one of my communities at least 80 per cent of the program clients are in arrears. That’s out of, I think, 100 homes. You’ve got 80 people in arrears, so 80 people who aren’t eligible for any programming. They’ve still got leaking roofs. They’ve still got lots of interior problems. There’s overcrowding there. They’re looking for additions to expand on the current living arrangements, exterior work — the siding and the windows and the doors. Well, the list can go on from there.
Addressing these issues is getting to one of the big core issues right now: how do we address the arrears, and how do clients and constituents appeal the existing circumstances there?
I’ll just end on that note, then. If the Minister can respond to that and what kind of strategy he thinks should happen here, or is there an existing strategy they’re using and are looking forward to
implementing to better the lives and the way constituents can use our housing programs?