Thank you, Mr. Speaker. This motion follows with my Member’s statement and questions I asked earlier today.
Mr. Speaker, the mission of the NWT Housing Corporation is to provide access to adequate, suitable and affordable housing. Through this mission, the intent is that through the provision of housing programs and services, the corporation
contributes to the health and education of our people and to the development of sustainable, vibrant and safe communities. This is a great intent and a great mission. The problem is with very rigid programs and very rigid policies, I’m not sure that we can actually meet the intent of what the Housing Corporation is trying to accomplish.
They’re doing a lot of great work. There are people buying homes through the programs that we offer. There are people in public housing through the programs we offer, but we’re having difficulties transitioning some of these people out and as a result of some of the rigid programming that we have, people are making choices that may not be in the best interests of their long-term goals, which is to get out of public housing. The example I gave earlier today where an individual was offered an opportunity to work for a three-week period but declined it because that money they would earn in that three-week period would pretty much all be lost to the rent which would increase immediately, it seems kind of counterproductive to what it is we’re trying to accomplish.
There are other examples. Many of our programs only have one intake. I think there are opportunities for increasing the number of intakes in certain programs we have like PATH. It’s a good program. People are accessing it, but because we only have one intake, are we doing as much as we can?
That’s what we’re talking about: flexibility. Every situation is going to be unique. Every situation needs to be thought of on its individual basis. I’m not saying, and I don’t believe any of us are saying, that people shouldn’t pay rent. If they’ve got money to pay rent, they should. But as they go from employment to non-employment back to employment, we need to create a system that will allow them to use some of that money to get rid of some of their arrears, and get rid of some of their debts, and maybe buy some extra clothes for their kids. But because our program is rigid and it snaps into effect immediately, anytime they get a little ahead, we pull back. We need to create some flexibility.
Now, I know this isn’t easy, Mr. Speaker. I know there are challenges. I know there’s a big challenge. For instance, if we’ve got individuals who are entering the world of full-time employment, how long do we want to keep giving them increased subsidies? I mean, they’re now working, they’re contributing. They may be able to pay rent, but how long do we want to keep them on? I’ve had conversations with a lot of my colleagues and there have been a lot of suggestions thrown around: maybe a tiered approach. Maybe as people take full-time employment, we work with them to find out what their earning capacity is going to be over a period of time and we ratchet it up over a period of time, allowing them to increase how much they pay
every month to the point where they’re paying the full allocation. The other thing that we could consider is as people start working full time, we could ratchet them into a homeownership program rather than just keeping them on rent. There are lots of things we can do and every one of them needs an open mind and every one of them needs us to think outside the box.
I worry that in government sometimes what happens is because rules have been broken, the next thing we do when a rule has been broken is we rewrite the policy and make it a little bit stricter. Then the next time we rewrite the policy and we make it a little bit stricter, to the point where nobody has to think. Just plug in a situation into the computer and the computer says now we do this. There’s no flexibility, no common sense, no humanity. Let’s have some humanity. Let’s have some common sense. Let’s have some flexibility. Let’s look at individuals and their situations on an individual basis. Let’s have polices that allow us to do that. That’s all we’re asking by way of this motion. Mr. Speaker. Thank you.