Mr. Chairman, the Member is right.; there was an effort to promote the sale of some of the existing public housing stock. We have managed to move a few. We have identified I think it is another 63 that could be sold. He is also correct that there was some concern with the cost of some of these units. We just have to make sure that a lot of the folks that maybe would buy these units would be able to maintain them. Some of them are older units. It is a concern there.
The vacant units is one that we hear obviously quite a bit about. In some communities we hear from folks there that have had units vacant in the community almost since the time they were built. We have taken steps to address some of that and find some solutions and to fill in these units. Our wish is to have folks that are able to qualify for the program be in the program, and that goes to another point that the Member raised on the income threshold. It is one area that when I first got the portfolio with the senior officials, I did say there was a gap of people that Members have been talking about for a long time that we need to address. Some of the smaller communities where folks are making a pretty decent wage, they are somehow over the income threshold and they fail to qualify even though we all know they’d be able to maintain their own unit.
So that is one that we are going to concentrate on for the next little bit. There is an ongoing policy review. We have one in 2010-2011 where we are
evaluating the Housing Choices programs. Obviously we would be discussing with committee and getting some feedback from them as to what they are hearing. We hear it quite a bit in the House. Also as part of this, there will be a review of the rent scale. The people with disabilities, we’ve doubled the amount of money we have available to convert houses to disabled access units. So they would be able to take us upon that money. We also have some designs and in some of the communities, the LHOs recognize that they have some disabled tenants and they take steps to try to address that.
I think I may have touched on most of the Member’s points and I will wait for the next round. Thank you, Mr. Chair.