Thank you, Mr. Chair. I think the Member said it very well when he first started, when he said the Housing Corporation can’t do everything. That’s a very important comment, especially with the challenges we face right now. We do continue to work with the communities. We’re trying to have community-based decisions. We work with communities with lease commitments. We have communities where we’re leasing space from them. In some communities, a small community might be one building that we’re leasing from them and being rented out. The housing for staff was another one where there was a good example of the Housing Corporation working in partnership with the communities, the dev corps, the community corps. There’s been a great deal of interest in that. So we’re working with them.
The single dwellings, that again it goes back to another challenge we’re facing with declining funding. We’ll have to have a look at how we do our infrastructure. If it’s more economical to do multi-family type buildings then that’s the direction we may have to go. We see some of our biggest need being single and one-bedroom units. I think that’s some of our highest needs. The elders, we continue and we will work with Health and Social Services to come up with a plan. If we can form a partnership then we’d be able to put the infrastructure up. So it is a growing concern, especially with the changing demographics and more people getting, I don’t want to say older, but getting more experienced.
Then the vacant units, I did quote some numbers before. We do have a number of vacant units across the Territories and we are trying to find solutions for some of the homeownership. The public housing ones are some of the numbers that I quoted where there is work being done to approximately 150 units. Once that work gets completed, and this year with the huge influx of money from the feds we’re able to do a lot of major M and I’s, and that could be one of the reasons we have so many vacant units. I can commit to this Assembly and to all Members that it will be our goal in the coming year, in the coming fiscal year, to try and knock all those vacant units off so when the Housing Corporation reports back to this Assembly this time next year, I’m hoping that our numbers are way down and there’s not so many vacant units. As the Member said, it does affect our overall core
need, so if we can get these 150 units on the ground then that will go a long way into meeting the core need, and I think that’s going to be a goal of ours. Thank you, Mr. Chair.