Thank you, Mr. Chair. I would like to welcome the Minister of the Department here today. As I said in some of my past comments when we have been doing either operational budgets or now capital budgets, and it’s hard sometimes to get these types of comments out of the Member for Range Lake, but I do appreciate where this department has been going. There has been a progression of success. There has been a transparency of information to the committee, which on all accounts, when we ask, is delivered on time and with the proper detail. So I applaud the Minister, I applaud the Housing Corp for really moving up, I believe, true to their word in wanting to do a very collaborative and consensus style approach. First and foremost I was going to make sure I echo those words.

I am very pleased to see that the current budget for capital has a number of new units in the seniors and caretaker area. It is important to me because I have been trying to raise the awareness. We have a number of new reports out there, you know, Our Elders: Our Communities, Aging in Place, the Continuing Care. We all know that we are going to be faced, in the very near future, with areas of concern with enough facilities for our seniors and our elders.

My first general question, seeing the fact that I know Fort McPherson here seems to be a benefactor as well as Whati, and I think there is another small unit in Tuktoyaktuk, how does the department come up with their strategy and framework for dealing with literally the large investment that will probably be required to deal with our aging senior population when it comes to infrastructure of facilities? Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Thank you, Mr. Dolynny. Minister McLeod.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. I will speak to the first part of the Member’s comments and then I am going to turn it over to Mr. Stewart to speak about this strategy that they use to come up with the allocation.

Again, we appreciate the Member’s comment on the direction this department has been going and his applause for this department. Part of the reason that we’re able to do a lot of the initiatives that we

have is because of our relationship with committee. We try to keep them up to date on a lot of the initiatives that we are bringing forward; we seek their support and their input. I think it goes a long way into a smooth transition into some of the work that we’re doing. So we appreciate the comments from the Member.

I will turn it over to Mr. Stewart to speak on the strategy we use to come up with the allocations of seniors units.

Thank you, Minister McLeod. Mr. Stewart.

Thank you, Mr. Stewart. Mr. Dolynny.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. I appreciate the information, and of course, Members will continuously have those high level discussions with the department on that. I believe that this is a growing issue that will plague not only Members, we know that there is a decrease in CMHC funding that will also have an impact on decision-making.

Mr. Chair, if I could, I would like to just change my direction a bit about vacancy. It seems to be a bit of a hot topic where as Members we continuously hear the following units have been vacant, are always vacant and yet we are either building a new facility or we are doing a retrofit. I know this has a bit of an operational overtone, but the issue of where do we make those decisions from a capital perspective knowing full well that we are dealing with vacancy. Again, I will let the department talk about what their vacancy is currently. But I believe

it is a concern and an optical concern for a lot of residents, seeing our inventory maybe not being used and yet we are seeing overcrowding in many of our units in other situations. Again, more of a broader question, Mr. Chair.

How are we dealing with vacancy and how does that vacancy reflect the decision-making on where we are doing our retrofits or where we are putting our new units? Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Dolynny. Minister McLeod.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. Vacancies play a large role in how we determine where we allocate our capital dollars. Obviously, you have got one community that has more vacancies and they can be vacant for a number of different reasons. I’m just trying to find the numbers here as to our vacancies across the Northwest Territories. Fifty public housing units that are vacant and available for occupancy, and again the local housing organization could be in the process of allocating them right now. We have approximately 135 units that are under repair, and once those are done they will be allocated.

The concern we get in a lot of the communities, and I have touched on it when I spoke to Mr. Yakeleya’s question before, was we have a lot of units that have outlived their usefulness. They are boarded up and we really don’t have any use for them. We try to work something out with the communities. We have a number that are slated for demolition, but then now with the HAZMAT requirements, that has added extra costs on. We had a fairly aggressive plan a few years ago, but we’re having to deal with the HAZMAT material. That has slowed us down a bit, but we still want to get that work done and have a lot of these units written off, demolished and removed, and then we can move forward from there. There are a number of different vacancies.

A few years ago we had 135 vacant HELP units, I think, across the Northwest Territories, but that was because the corporation had access to all that federal money. We were the only jurisdiction that matched it in the country and we put a number of units on the ground anticipating that we were going to get clients for them and realized, at the end of the day, that we overestimated our ability to get clients. So we converted a lot of these into public housing units; we rented some out to different professionals in the community. So we found a way to deal with all those vacancies, but there’s always going to be a vacancy rate. We have 50 units that are ready for occupancy and another 135 that are under repair.

I appreciate those vacancy statistics. It’s always good to keep current and I’m sure we’ll be asking those same questions when we do the operational budget here in the spring. The only advice I can give to the Minister and the

department is to, you know, we tend to always talk about our overcrowding problems in non-market communities, but I stress that even in market communities such as Yellowknife and some of the major centres, we do have overcrowding as well, so I’m hoping we don’t lose sight of some of the needs and designs of all communities moving forward. I know you do, I just want to reiterate that.

With the time remaining, I’d like to maybe combine two types of questions I have left and the Minister can answer accordingly. I see on the project list in infrastructure a lot of portable-type solar panel systems, which I’m strongly encouraged to see that, and I know you currently started up with a utility tracking system and monitoring energy. Maybe if you can give an update how effective are we seeing some of the preliminary numbers with respect to that and how these voltaic programs are going to aid in achieving whatever goals you have.

Number two is we know that there are always a number of deferred versus carry-over projects from one year to the next, and it would be nice to see how much of the projects from last year we are still working on and how much of that was carried forward into this fiscal budget.

Deferred and carried over, it’s about $8 million, and we do have a chart with all of the projects that are on the ground right now. I think we’re at about 85 percent for this fiscal year. I saw the figure 85 percent. If it’s more, I’ll get the right number and remind the Member about it later, but I’m pretty sure we’re at about 85 percent right now.

The photovoltaic, we’re looking forward to the savings that it’s going to potentially bring the corporation. Again, we have to find innovative ways to deal with a lot of the… Ninety-six percent of our projects are out this year, so I was a little bit off by saying 85; it’s 96 percent. That was 96 percent. You know, 96 percent. We recently did a seniors home in Hay River and that was just completed, so we haven’t had any results from that.

The stats on the unit up in Inuvik, I think is what the Member was referring to. We’ll have to pull the stats out, unless Mr. Stewart knows them off hand, but we’ll have to pull the stats out and share them with committee. I know tracking it is available online, but I’ll pull the stats out and I’ll share it with the Member in committee.

Thank you, Minister. Committee, we’re doing general comments on the NWT Housing Corporation. Next I have Mr. Nadli, followed by Mr. Moses.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. Just a couple of comments in terms of the Housing Corporation and affecting, of course, the whole area of housing and how it is that we meet the needs of families and individuals that aspire to either own their own

homes or else rent through the Public Housing Program initiatives.

One of the things that I see that seems to be fairly common is just the trend towards the public rental system. In some respects, the reality of living in the communities where you have a 40 to 50 percent rate of unemployment, opportunities are very few and far between, at least trying to work with people so that they can own their own homes, and it’s very challenging. I think most families that are starting out want to own their own homes but the challenges that they face in terms of employment opportunities, and unless you have major industrious sort of development projects perhaps close to the community, those opportunities will not exist.

Some other comments are there has been very little new construction of new houses, especially detached family units. It’s very clear that very few new houses are being constructed. At the same time, people in the communities, when they try to qualify for a program to get a job, they have to ensure that they don’t make too much money and at the same that they don’t make too little money. Their income has to be just right for them to qualify. One example is the homeownership program. I wanted to know if the department is looking at this reality and seeing if there’s an ongoing effort to ensure that yes, indeed, the department is trying to meet the needs of young families that want to own their own homes. They’re quite capable of working and that the Housing Corporation is providing those opportunities. I wanted to know if the department is making that extra effort to ensure that we do in fact try to meet the needs of people so that they can own their own homes.

Thank you, Mr. Nadli. Minister McLeod.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. I think our track record has proven that we do try to assist people in getting into their own home, and I think it’s one of the reasons that we’re in a situation now where our focus has to be on more multi-unit type configurations for a lot of younger people. A lot of the families that are able to get into homeownership, I think in the last… Since homeownership started way back in the SHAG and HAP house days, I think we’ve got about 2,700 units that we help families get into through our homeownership program. We’ve raised our income threshold. On the access to homeownership we’ve raised our income threshold to give more people an opportunity to get in.

There’s always going to be a need for social housing. Ideally, we’d like to see someone that goes through the social housing situation because they don’t have a job or they can’t get a house and then if their financial situation improves or their prospects improve, then ideally we’d like to see

them graduate into our homeownership program. We’ve seen that a number of times in the past.

At the same time, I have to caution that we need to ensure that people we put into homeownership are able to maintain it. We’ve run into a number of cases where folks have gotten into homeownership, it was a little bit more than they had anticipated, and they’ve quit claimed the house and actually turned them back over to the corporation and moved back into public housing. We want to make sure that our clients are set up for success and we don’t set them up for failure. That’s one of the reasons we’re so concerned about the income threshold, because we want to make sure that they’re able to pay for the upkeep and maintenance of the house. That’s why we ran the Homeownership Entry Level Program, the HELP program. That gives them a window of about two years to determine whether they think that homeownership is for them, and if it’s not, then after two years they can turn it back over to the corporation and go back into public housing. Or if they determine they want to be a homeowner, then I believe there’s a $10,000 incentive that we give them. So we’re trying to set them up to take advantage of the programs that we offer.

It’s very encouraging to see that the system does indeed respond to the need of people who want to aspire to own their own homes.

My next point is this has been an ongoing matter for some time. I am hoping there would be a resolution of some sort in terms of trying to sort out through the jurisdictional issues. I’m speaking in particular to the Hay River Reserve. They are a reserve within the Northwest Territories and there are houses on the reserve that number about five and there is a real housing need. The jurisdictional issues have to be sorted out in terms of land tenure and the maintenance of those units and whether it could be financed by individuals. Of course, the involvement of the GNWT through the Housing Corporation is a matter that needs to be resolved. It’s been ongoing and I’m hoping the Minister and the department will at least try to come to a point where the matter can be addressed and build on some of the common interests of the people. We want to ensure that people have houses and aren’t homeless. At the same time, we need a good system so that housing can be available for people on the reserve. I just wanted to check on the status. I understand there have been some discussions and wonder if that’s going to come to a resolution at some point. Mahsi.

This issue with the Hay River Reserve has been ongoing for some time. We’ve been trying to find some resolution. We’ve been working on trying to get leases to those properties so we can make them available through some of our programs. I think we worked out an arrangement with the Hay River Reserve and we’re

happy with the lease. I believe they are okay with it. We’re just waiting to hear back from the AANDC Minister because, apparently, it’s they’re reserve, they had to go through the AANDC Minister, so we’re just waiting to hear back. If we don’t hear back soon, then through what channels are available to us, we may have to send the federal folks a note saying we’d like to get some resolution to this because this has been going on as long as I’ve had the Housing portfolio. Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Maybe I will try to combine these two final points into one so I don’t take up too much time. The other point I wanted to be considered by the Housing Corporation is the accessibility of disabled persons. Of course, the social housing and public units sometimes do occupy and they have chronic conditions, whether it’s arthritis and they have to walk up the stairs or sometimes they are in a wheelchair. Sometimes they are restricted in terms of going up the stairs or restricted in terms of their mobility from their room to the bathroom to the kitchen. I just want to understand what steps the Housing Corporation is ensuring that that is being addressed, so that disabled persons at least have accessibility to their units in a very comfortable way.

The last point is in terms of seniors housing. Seniors, for the most part, are on a fixed income. They’ve been living in units that are very old, maybe 30 or 40 years old. They’ve raised their kids in there and their kids have moved on, but they continue to pay rent. At some point, would the Housing Corporation consider perhaps, because of these older units, giving the responsibility of ownership to the seniors and consider the rent they have paid over the course of the years the equity? Mahsi.

As far as the accessible units, through our CARE program, if we have seniors who are living in their own homes and have application, there might be some opportunities there to get that work done.

In our public housing units, I know in a few communities they have a couple of units that are earmarked for accessibility, and if they’re not and they realize that somebody needs an accessible unit, then I think the local housing authority would take the necessary steps to ensure they make the home as accessible as possible for the resident living in there.

We’ve heard on a number of occasions about seniors that are living in a three- or four-bedroom house and have raised their families there, they’ve been there 20 or 30 years and they’re paying right now, depending on what zone they are in, up to $80 or $90 a month and that’s all in. That’s everything included. If we were to turn those units over to them or sell them to the seniors that are in there, then they’re going to be responsible for their own utilities

which, depending on which community they’re in, could be quite substantial and we want to ensure that they have the ability to look after utilities before we consider selling them the unit.

Again, as I said before, Housing Corporation has proven that we are getting to be fairly flexible and are willing to work with anyone and everyone out there. My big concern and the discussion I have with the officials at the NWT Housing Corporation is we don’t want to put people in positions where it’s a hardship to them. We don’t want to put them in a position to fail. Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Thank you, Mr. McLeod. Next I have Mr. Moses, followed by Ms. Bisaro.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. Before I get into some of the areas that a lot of Members have touched on, the department has come before committee and we’ve had a lot of good discussion there as well. Over the length of this Assembly, I want to applaud the department for all the good work that’s going on and good initiatives, changing policies and also looking at the infrastructure investments going into communities. Not only new units but there are a lot of retrofits. We are really fixing up some of the housing units that Members do hear concerns on. That’s good to hear.

Just looking at the project list, it’s great to see that it’s very diverse in terms that we are getting some kind of project going on in every community across the Northwest Territories. So it’s not focused in one area, but spreading the capital investments in the Northwest Territories. With that said, I know there are still places like bigger centres, like here in Yellowknife, who have long waiting lists for housing. Possibly a needs assessment needs to be done when we do our next capital budget in terms of seeing where we can start putting these units to address some of these needs that we’re seeing with our residents of the NWT.

Even moving further on that like maybe possibly a needs assessments in terms of transitional units, we do have a high homelessness issue in some of the communities, especially the regional centres and how we can address the hard to house. I’ve brought this up before, but I know at the Aurora Research Institute they are doing that one study of pilings and how the pilings are being developed, so that they freeze the ground and keep the permafrost frozen. Maybe the Housing Corporation has looked into that study or worked with the staff over at the research institute to see how we can incorporate that into the building of these new units, especially in the Beaufort-Delta region where we see a lot of the area with permafrost.

Another one that I know is pretty tough to do but we do have a lot of bachelor residents out there who also do require housing, and I know when we do build infrastructure, we want to focus on the family,

but these individuals who are bachelors or are single have a hard time finding units. I think they may sometimes end up on income assistance where they could possibly be getting some kind of housing help.

Another one was the elder-friendly units. I know that in some cases when we go out and build units, if we can develop some type of general development or any units that we build that there’s general planning for should this unit become available for an elder we want to make sure that these types of specs are put into the planning design. So if a family was not able to stay in the unit and with the increase in our senior population somebody might need a housing unit, but they might not be able to get into the unit because it might not be fit for them. So just something to think about as we’re building these units that we develop some type of general guidelines or general specs for each unit that should a senior or a senior couple want to go in there that it’s readily available and no retrofits need to be done in terms of moving into those positions. Like I said, it’s generally happening with the work that’s going on where we’re investing in the infrastructure throughout the Northwest Territories.

I guess another concern is we do have this one apartment building in Inuvik, a very old apartment building and I know it was on the list for retrofits, the Sydney Apartments. If there’s an update on them, that would be great to see where we’re moving in that area.

Those are just some general observations and some ideas and things that maybe the Housing Corp can look into as they’re investing into the communities. Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Thank you, Mr. Moses. Minister McLeod.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. Again, we appreciate the Member’s comments on the work that the NWT Housing Corporation is doing, and his committee is actually the one that we report to, so we’ve had a lot of interaction with the Social Programs committee. We appreciate the comments.

The Member was talking about the units for seniors and people with disabilities. We have a visible design that we incorporate into all our new units now that we build. So that is there.

The bachelor units in Inuvik, those are actually being replaced. We have a contract that’s been let and work was supposed to be underway. So those are being replaced.

We have one pilot project, and the Member was talking about the hard to house. In some of the larger centres, some of the regional centres are a little more fortunate because they have groups and organizations in the community that give people an

option. But some of the small communities, there’s really no option there. We’ve tried a pilot program, and I think we’ve had three take us up on it right now. We still have one more that we’re hoping went out there, and that was for an initiative in the communities for a hard-to-house type of unit where we do a little bit of renovations and work with the local group to look over the house first. Of course, there will be some compensation for them to maintain the unit for us. So we have had three communities take us up on that and we still have, I think one more that’s available.

So we try to do what we can to address. Again, there’s a number of reasons that people are homeless. Addictions issues, obviously, is one of them. A lot of them have been evicted from the units that they’re in because of the addictions issues. So it’s a struggle to try and find a balance, but we try to find some pilot projects and we support others that give them a chance to get out of the situation they’re in and hopefully turn their life around and be able to get back into public housing.

Being involved in housing for as long as I have, I’ve seen it firsthand where folks have been given another chance and they’ve gotten it and run with it and done quite well. So if there’s any way that we can assist, it’s those options that we look at. Thank you.

I also just made a comment there in terms of with the Aurora Research Institute and the study that they’re doing with the pilings, and I just wanted to see if the department has looked into that research and whether it’s feasible and the work that’s been going on there in terms of building our units up in the Beaufort-Delta. Thank you.