Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I might need my glasses for this one. I have some small font here and I'm aging. I just want to make one correction before I begin though. I've heard a couple of times that the 2014 Needs Assessment, Members have quoted it's 32 per cent in housing core need, and that is actually incorrect. 31.7 per cent have a housing problem, but everyone that has a housing problem does not necessarily mean core need. The total core need actually on this assessment from 2014 is 19.8 per cent, so I wanted to correct that to start with. Then to go further with the motion actually, we've been told that we need to get serious, and we are serious about housing within the NWT. The GNWT does agree that we need to look at the goal of decreasing core need to at least the national levels. We use this point -- and every time we meet with the federal, provincial, territorial meetings we say that constantly that that NWT, Nunavut, and the three Territories of the Yukon Territory have the greatest housing needs and the greatest core needs, so we talk about it all the time. We advocate it all the time, and so we are serious that we need to address that.
The federal engagement however, is really key to doing that. I mean we could build all the houses we want. The reality is that the CMHC funding is declining and will end within 20 years, and if we don’t find a way to provide for that operating and maintenance cost we're in trouble, so we do need a plan. I'll address that later on in my talking. The other thing that I want to talk about is that we have spent millions of dollars from the years 2009 to 2014, we invest $174 million in capital investment in housing. Of those years, even though we spent $174 million, from the same time in 2009 our core need was 19 per cent. After spending $174 million in 2014 our core need was 20 per cent. We actually went up a percentage within that. So we've spent millions and millions and it's still not addressing we have hug needs.
The other thing that I'd like to talk about is that we have made an indent within the communities. Our core need within the community's has actually gone down substantially and at the same time that our core needs of the communities went down, Yellowknife increased. It went from nine per cent to 18 per cent, and that's really about affordability. We don’t have rent controls within the NWT and so the Government of the Northwest Territories has no control over what market rent is going for. So people that work in the services industry that are making a minimum wage, $10.50 an hour, have affordability issues within the market communities because rents are like $1,500 minimum for one bedroom. There are huge affordability issues and the Government of Northwest Territories can't control that because we can't control the rental market.
I want to talk about one thing we tried. Some people say is it just about money so we have tried to do a transitional rent program that we gave people $500 a month to supplement their rent. It was a two-year program. In all honesty, when people say about income support and money, that was kind of a supplement to income support because we were giving people extra money on top. So it wasn't really building housing or fixing housing. It was only keeping people in housing. Within that, we had a really hard time getting the intake for it, even though we advertised weekly in the newspaper for a full year of that. So we needed to work on some communications, but it wasn't done.
What are the drivers of core need? We have huge issues: an aging population that we are facing, limited employment opportunities in our rural and remote communities, Members have spoken over and over in the House about the lack of jobs within the communities and the lack of positions. The government recognizes that. So some of the strategies that they have been talking about is highways to make people more accessible, to deal with the cost of living, to promote mining, et cetera, looking at fisheries, looking at other enterprises that we can do, diversifying our market. So we are considering it, but jobs are key. Until we have adequate jobs for everybody in the communities, we will always have core need issues.
The other issue we have is really aging infrastructure. We have really old homes. Again, with the lack of CMHC funding, it is declining, so we have trouble meeting all the needs of the people. Huge populations of the community actually rely on public housing. Our needs are bigger than our abilities to deal with them.
We have a host of programs, but really what I want to say is that the federal government, they do recognize that northern housing is a priority. Although, I need Members to realize that we only have 43,000 people within the NWT, and we cover a huge, vast area of land within the whole of Canada. So within that, when we are getting federal transfer payments, it is based on the 43,000 people. We don't have the resources that larger centres in the south have. Our whole population could fit on a couple of blocks in some of the major cities in the south. We don't get the money that they have. However, within this new year, the federal government has given us $35 million that we will use towards that. They recognize it, and we are advocating strongly.
The housing percentage of money that we spent in the Northwest Territories compared to our revenue, even though we get the least amount -- we only get paid for 43,000 people -- we spent seven times the national average on our housing compared to our revenue than every other jurisdiction. We are spending huge amounts of money, more so than anyone else. We don't have the revenue base to be able to justify that.
There was a comment made as well that we didn't have a plan, that the Housing Corporation had no plan. In fact, the Housing Corporation has been using a plan. It is called "Building for the Future: Northern Solutions for Northern Housing." They were using that, it was developed in 2012, and it just recently expired. We are actually looking at doing the survey, like I have said many times in this House, and the results of the survey will lead into our new plan. The plan will be, like I said and I presented in our business plan as well -- we know that CMHC money is gone, and we are working on a 20-year plan, not a three-year plan or a five-year plan, but a 20-year plan, to actually address the declining CMHC funding.
The other thing people have said is we need to step up our lobbying efforts and that we have no proposal for the federal government. Actually, in fact, I have met with the other two territories. We have agreed to work in partnership to promote the needs of the Northwest Territories. We haven't got an MOU, but we are in the process of designing it. We have developed a package that is still in draft form, that the three territories have to approve before I will release it, that advocates for the federal money. So the three territories have come together. We are advocating strongly as a group to make the federal government recognize that the territories are different in that we have higher needs and higher costs. Then of course, again, we are going down at the end of this month to actually have the provincial-territorial meetings to address that.
I also want to talk about the definition. It was approached by a Member that we should change the definition of our core need within the NWT. However, I think that is kind of, at this point, not reasonable because the motion is actually looking for us to address our core need to match the national core need. If I change our definition, then I am actually comparing apples to oranges instead of apples to apples. If we want to match their national definition, then we have to use the national definition so that we can actually have a comparable rate so that it is measurable so that we know if we have actually met it. It would be easy to say affordability is a write off. Take everybody that can't afford their places and write them off. I have beat the national core need because affordability is a core need. When people are making $10.50 an hour and they are paying $1500 a month, that is a core need. They cannot afford to do that.
What is really different here, that we do differently in the Northwest Territories that isn't done in the other jurisdictions, is that we don't base it off of just 30 per cent. We consider the affordability, 30 per cent, but we also consider our cost of living. Within our public housing units, for example, people are only paying between four per cent to 19.5 per cent of their income towards rent. Every other jurisdiction that is using this core need are paying 30 per cent. We already are giving people breaks because we are not charging them 30 per cent than everyone else is. We have had the luxury to be able to use our monies to provide programs as we think best for northern people. If I am forced to meet the core need as defined by the national definition, then I have to restructure and look at the programs that we do and say, okay, if we are just looking at those programs and we only want to meet 30 per cent, then I really have to be careful and say, is it the best use to meet that goal that we provide extra programs. For example, the four per cent in the rent charges instead of the 30 per cent. I have to really caution the Members to be really careful in what they are putting forward with this motion because the NWT Housing Corporation does a lot of programs that are outside just meeting the core need.
We do have some programs, as in CARE-Major, that will give programs -- that are not a cost-sharing. So all of those things might have to come to an end. If my whole focus has to be on just getting down two per cent a year to meet the national core need, then anything extra that we are doing that isn't in the national standards, we need to look if we can afford that, or if we should be taking that money and putting it towards the core need that the Members wish so that we can become a national standard but really not addressing the needs of the people within the Northwest Territories. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.