Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I also rise in support of the motion requesting that full responsibility for the Public Rental Subsidy Program be returned to the local housing organizations.
My list will be familiar now to many. Some of the problems, not surprisingly: communication between the new agencies is proving to be difficult and problematic. As well as communications within the system, we’ve got a third-party situation for our tenants now. Rather than dealing with one office, the original intent, they’re, of course, dealing with a couple and this is leading to a lot of confusion, frustration and failures. The income reporting requirements, again, is pretty onerous on people. Monthly requirements -- my colleague Mr. Krutko has highlighted that situation. There are lots of other issues on the assessments and the basis of gross income rather than net and so on that are actually related to this and the lack of understanding that can accrue with true one-stop shopping for housing services.
Of course, the client service officers, they also have other commitments, as we’ve heard, and they’re not able to focus on housing as officers used to be within the LHOs. Simply keeping those positions, client services officers positions filled in communities is a challenge because, of course, they do have these other roles to play. They are sensitive roles in small communities associated with income support and because it’s hard on people, of course, there is a lot of turnover in those positions and thus it makes it even more
challenging for the housing aspects that they are also meant to fulfill.
Having two locations, as I mentioned, not all public housing tenants are on income support and so it’s not as straightforward as it was apparently initially conceived, leading to confusion and unnecessary work.
Mr. Speaker, today’s shell game of responsibilities that I experienced during question period is probably a good example of what my housing tenant constituents actually experience on a regular basis and I thought was a good sort of reflection of the issue that we’re trying to address here.
The Member for Yellowknife Centre highlighted implementation as the problem. That Member seems to have infinite patience for resolving this. We’ve been four years at this and, my gosh, Mr. Speaker, how long do we need to wait? I think it’s clear now that we can’t wait any longer. We must act now to get things back to a model we know will actually work. He also mentioned that the new model was more efficient and so on. How can that be so when we’ve created the 13 or 14 new positions, $1.3 million and, of course, shifted costs to the tenants now who bear costs such as the monthly administration work that they have to do trying to get proof of employment from employers who are probably slow to report that, et cetera, et cetera, and running back and forth between different offices?
Mr. Speaker, I’ll just leave it at that. Many of these issues have already been highlighted. But I do say let’s return the Public Housing Subsidy Program to the Housing Corporation specialists that are actually efficient at delivering that program. Mahsi.