Thank you, Mr. Chair. The Member raises a few points that are of concern to us. Federal funding is obviously the big one. That’s something that this year alone I think we’re in the neighbourhood of $670,000 that we’ve lost. Since the start of this, I think it’s up to $5.8 million and that goes into the Member’s next point of improving the rent collection. I think that would go a long way into alleviating some of the money that we could be losing from CMHC. It’s a message that we’re starting to get out there and I think folks out there are starting to realize that it’s to their benefit, too, if they’re kept current and up to date, entering into repayment plans and that would qualify them for a lot of programs.
The community liaison was a good program that was in place. Unfortunately when there was a budget reduction exercise a couple of years ago, they were the ones that got cut, but we’re willing to take the advice of committee and work with the communities to see if there’s an appetite to bring these positions back, especially when it comes to the homeownership initiative and just giving out advice in that they were well versed, they knew the communities very well. We have the tenant relations officers that deal with the public housing issues.
The translation, we try and have folks that speak the local language to some of our folks when they’re in visiting or having people coming in to see them, just to make sure that interpretation is right and the clients understand the programs and what we’re trying to do for them.
The public housing stock, we’re making some improvements to the public housing stock. The Member spoke about the energy efficiency and that’s a huge goal of ours through the major M and I program and the public housing stock and the CARE program. The money has gone up considerably for that and we’re having more uptake. Even if it’s a simple thing like replacing windows and doors goes a long way into that, and we’ve seen that the old windows that came with a lot of the old packages, I think you’ve seen them, they’re very draughty.
The vacant units continue to be a concern. We have about 192 vacant units. There are about 150 of them that are being repaired. So we’re hoping to get those back into the inventory and there’s 42 that are available.
I appreciate the Member’s comments and all the other Members’ comments on the Public Housing Rental Subsidy. We’re looking for a smooth transition. We were able to do this work with the folks that we had on the ground and we’re looking at having the LHOs take over the responsibility of the assessments in June. So we’ll have that done quite soon and we want to make sure that we do it right and that there’s a very smooth transition. We have to work with our colleagues over at ECE, but as far as our capacity to take this back on, I think it’s well known and we’ve heard from a lot of communities that they’re ready.
The community needs survey, as I stated yesterday, would go a long way into determining our infrastructure acquisition plan for not this fiscal year because this is the budget we’re dealing with now, but when we come forward to committee with next year’s infrastructure, it should reflect the needs of the communities according to this survey. So we’re looking forward to that.
I think I’ve touched on the Member’s points and I’m sure the Member will have questions as we go through detail. Thank you, Mr. Chair.