Mahsi, Mr. Speaker. I rise today as the mover of this motion aimed at addressing the deplorable state of housing endured by too many of our citizens, and disproportionately by our most vulnerable citizens. The purpose of this motion is to demonstrate the determination of this Assembly to take action to improve the state of our territorial housing stock: its suitability, adequacy and affordability.
It is a priority of the 18thAssembly to increase the availability of safe and affordable housing and create solutions to address homelessness.
As this motion states, the prevalence of core need in our housing stock, both publicly and privately owned, is large and trending larger.
The 2014 NWT Community Survey provides information on the condition of all housing in the NWT by examining nationally accepted indicators, including suitability, adequacy and affordability. I know we've talked about this today Mr. Speaker, but I'll just briefly go over them again. Suitability is defined as having the appropriate number of bedrooms for the number of occupants as determined by the National Occupancy Standards. Adequate housing must have running water, an indoor toilet, bathing and washing facilities and must not require major systemic repairs. Affordable housing costs less than 30 per cent of net household income.
If a dwelling does not meet one or more of these conditions: suitability, adequacy or affordability, the dwelling is considered to have a housing problem. If a dwelling has a housing problem and a total household income below the core need income threshold, it is considered to be in core need. The data points out that the chronic deficit in core need is not improving, and it won’t improve until we get serious about meeting the housing needs of our citizens.
The available data, and our motion, indicate that there are 15,000 houses in the NWT and that one-fifth of them are unaffordable or unsuitable or inadequate; in other words, in core need, and that compares to a national core need rate of 12 per cent.
As to supply, we know there are 738 families and individuals on waiting lists for public housing in the NWT because it is their most affordable option. The lack of opportunity for affordable accommodation drives the prices of rental housing up in an endless cycle.
This situation hasn’t improved for as long as we’ve been carrying out the territorial housing surveys and that’s not surprising. When it comes to capital spending,
it's the roads, bridges, fibre optic link, and the so-called economic building blocks that get the lion's share of cash. Two hundred-plus million for a bridge; a hundred million as the territorial share of the road to Tuk and $85 million for a fibre optic line.
Despite these investments, the GNWT has a public infrastructure deficit of $3.4 billion dollars as calculated last year. The largest part of that is for roads but the figure also includes hospitals and health centres, and community-owned infrastructure. This is huge figure, Mr. Speaker; twice the size of the territorial budget and it doesn't include the investment required in housing.
Half of the 2400 units owned by the NWT Housing Corporation will need to be replaced in the next 20 years at a total cost of $600 million. The question is about what order to address these needs in. What are the capital spending priorities of this Assembly? They're stated as the Mackenzie Valley Highway, the Slave Geological Province Highway and the Whati All-Season Road, in that order. These are the projects we've repeatedly been told will bring prosperity, employment, opportunity and an end to want for our citizens.
Well, that hasn't happened before, Mr. Speaker, and in our flat economy it's not likely to happen now. The cost of living here in Yellowknife has not been reduced because we have a $200 million bridge. The Inuvik to Tuk Highway will be completed in 2018, but with the oil and gas industry moribund, that's not going to magically bring jobs to either Inuvik or Tuktoyaktuk.
In all our communities, the prosperity and well-being of our citizens depends most fundamentally on having an adequate and affordable home to live in. Keeping and getting a job depends on having a safe and healthy place to live. Getting to school and being ready to learn, that also depends on having a safe and healthy place to live. In fact, of course, no one benefits from having substandard housing.
Mr. Speaker, that's the reason for this motion. With it, Members want to send a clear message to this Government, and to the people of the Northwest Territories, that we are serious about making progress on improving housing conditions. For the purposes of the coming business plans, we are indicating the direction we want this Government to heed in setting future spending priorities.
The motion calls for action in three ways. We are calling on this government to make a commitment to reducing the level of core need for all NWT housing by two per cent per year for four years so that we meet the national average. The government will need to evaluate of the total cost to redress core need at a rate of two per cent a year and attach a dollar value to the work that will be needed annually to achieve this goal. We would hope and expect to see that funding commitment begin in the next business planning cycle. That deals with the adequacy and suitability elements of core need.
Mr. Speaker, there's then supply. Our motion calls on the government to make investing in social housing a priority. This government needs to factor in the $30 million annual investment to replace public housing units. There's another unknown amount of money required to meet the needs of the hundreds of people who are on the public housing waiting list. I want to stress that one of the major justifications this Government makes in putting the case for big infrastructure projects is the employment that will result. This is no less true of a big capital building program for housing. Investing in an increased supply of public housing will put people in homes and, for the periods of construction, will put people to work.
Finally, this motion calls upon our Government to increase lobbying efforts to restore CMHC contributions for operations and maintenance, and for the GNWT to organize its own spending to take maximum advantage of federal funds available. Mr. Speaker, I'm not overstating the case when I say the need is desperate. We want our citizens to prosper and to see an easing in the huge burden of negative social conditions, so many of which can be attributed, directly or indirectly, to poor housing conditions.
We built a $200 million bridge that provided a negligible, if any, benefit in reducing the cost of living here in the North Slave.
How the Members of the day put that project ahead of putting roofs over the heads of our people is beyond me, but this has got to stop. We cannot continue to ignore the suffering, and that's not melodramatic. This does result in suffering of our citizens. We cannot continue to see this trend become worse and worse as the years go on. It's time to call a halt, beginning with this motion today. I look forward to support of Members for this motion. Mahsi, Mr. Speaker.