Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Under corporate summary I’m going to strive for a policy-type question but it obviously will get into the areas of specifics that are further along. My concern is about collections and policy. Is the Minister able to provide some information which is what is the collection rate at the departmental level of the corporation level, sorry, on mortgage rates and, of course, rental rates? What is the collection rate? Thank you.

Minister of Housing.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. The mortgage collection rate is about 40 percent and the rental collection rate is about 76 percent right now. Thank you.

Does the Minister have a dollar amount attributed to that 40 percent and that 76, respectively? So that would be for mortgage and rental. Would he be able to attach dollar amounts to what is collected and what is outstanding? Thank you.

Both rental arrears and mortgage arrears are about $13 million, so we’re looking at $26 million total. Thank you.

Does the department have a policy on the threshold that defines what’s considered to be a reasonable rate of return or I should say a reasonable rate of collection? Thank you.

Mr. Chair, we ask our LHOs to have a collection rate of about 90 percent,

and I think for the mortgage we look at about the same amount too. Thank you.

Speaking directly about the LHOs, what is the policy if an LHO is falling behind on the compliance of 90 percent on either/or? Thank you.

Mr. Chair, obviously, if the LHO falls behind on the 90 percent, that takes money away from their O and M and their ability to operate. We would have to work with those LHOs very closely, because we do have some LHOs that are in a bit of a deficit and we have to work with them to come up with a debt recovery plan. It’s to their benefit to try and have the 90 percent rate, but at the same time we can’t put all of the onus on the LHO. The tenants have to come up with their share of it too. This puts LHOs into a bind because it affects sometimes their ability to do the maintenance and the O and M, so we’ve had to work with these LHOs quite closely to make sure that they don’t get into dire financial straits. Thank you.

How long is the collection rate for mortgages been at 40 percent and the rental rate collection at 76 percent? How long has that been? Thank you.

The 40 percent for the mortgage is fairly consistent. The 76 percent, I think as we move back into the LHOs doing the assessments and that, I think we’re going to see a bit of spike in the collection rate. I think we’ve already seen a bit of a spike. It may have been at 64 percent at one particular time, if not lower, and so the number is starting to climb and I’m sure as more and more folks are going into their LHOs to get assessed and then being able to pay their rent right there, I think we will see that 76 start moving up. Thank you.

What’s the plan of the department, corporately that is, to start picking up the 60 percent of our mortgages that are still left outstanding when we’re referring to payments? Thank you.

Mr. Chair, we’ve given people an opportunity to enter into a mortgage repayment plan and we have had fairly good uptake. We have 139 who have chosen one of the options, the mortgage payment plan. We’ve had some that have refinanced through the bank. We have some that have refinanced through the NWT Housing Corporation. We have some that have entered into repayment plans. We’re quite confident and, as I said in my opening remarks, we will get to the point where we will take legal action on some of the folks that are further behind on their payments.

This is one that we struggle with and I’ve said a few times, part of the onus is on the NWT Housing Corporation because we should have gone after these folks a lot sooner to prevent them from

getting into the situations that a lot of them find themselves in now. Part of the onus is on us and we accept that, but a lot of the onus is on the tenants because they signed an agreement to make a payment plan and too many times shelter costs are not one of their priorities. We’ve kind of fostered that by not being as forceful as we should have and we’ve allowed them to accumulate their arrears, and now we’re finding ourselves in a position of where we’re having to go and make all these folks accountable for the amount of arrears that they’re in. Thank you.

In the last, we’ll say, five years, how many mortgages have been under the scrutiny of legal action to pay? Thank you.

All the new programs we have now are all forgivable. The ones that are mortgages... I mean, we’re starting the legal proceedings just this particular year. Within the last five years, we really haven’t done much towards being...(inaudible)... We try as hard as we can to work with the clients and legal action is the last resort. Unfortunately, that’s where we find ourselves today having to take legal action against those that are in most arrears. Thank you.

I take it from the Minister’s answer that there’s never been anyone evicted or forced out if they have not been making their payments in the last five years. Thank you.

I was just making sure I got the correct information here before I responded to the Member. In the last five years we have had some foreclosures and now we have some that we’re working on, we’re taking legal action, and we have about 50 more pending. Thank you.

How many mortgages does the NWT Housing Corporation have at this time that are what I would define as active? So whether they’re in arrears or they’re in good standing. Thank you.

Really lots. We have 428 active files, number of clients. Thank you.

We have a little more than 400. Am I correct by saying that we have approximately, rounding numbers off, we only have 160 clients paying their mortgages within a reasonable time or on time, and we have the remainder, we’ll guesstimate at about 240 or more, who are not paying their mortgage? Is that correct? Thank you.

Those numbers the Member has quoted, they are pretty close.

As my last question, seeing as how my time has reached the end on the clock, when can we expect to see… I think the Minister had indicated that there are some foreclosures and there is paperwork, it sounds as if there are 50 people. When can we expect some paperwork of that nature to be filed and, furthermore, if you are

closing these files through a legal process, how much money is that outstanding, those 50 files? What is that worth to the government? Thank you.

We have, I think, served some notices right now that we have as part of the 50. There are still a number of them that are pending right now, but we do have some that have already been served, so that process has already been started. As far as the actual number, the total value of our mortgage portfolio is $86 million and the value of our forgivable loans is $45 million. The value of our repayable loans is $41 million dollars. Thank you.

Is the Minister able to inform us as to what those 50 outstanding mortgages that it sounds like they are pursuing legal action on, the value of those particular mortgages once we foreclose and put those up for sale? Thank you.