Excuse me, Mr. Chair, if I have to speak really quickly. I don't have a clock here, and I am going to try to address as many as I can. I will be going all over the place because I didn't have time to format it.
Thank you for recognizing that it is a difficult portfolio. I also recognize housing is a difficult portfolio and really important. When we were doing the Cabinet shuffle, I actually asked to keep housing because I believe that it takes someone with experience, with a social degree, actually, to provide some necessary changes, so I did ask to keep this portfolio, good, bad, or ugly.
The elimination of the transitional rent program, in all honesty, that program was not working. It was a two-year program, and we weren't giving people the skills to be able to address their living situation after. We are looking at changing programs, so, yes, we will be re-profiling perhaps a lot more money than that, actually, because programs that are not being effective or are not being efficient need to be changed into things that work, and that will be part of our program renewal project that we are doing now.
The CARE program, there were some cuts to it, and, yes, people do need CARE packages. They need major renovations. However, we put more of a focus on prevention. There is lots of research that says prevention is better than intervention; in-home maintenance as well. If we go into people's homes every year and provide preventative maintenance and we're there every year, we should not have to spend $100,000 every 10 years to deal with huge renovations that people could have alleviated if they had done things like clearing the snow off their roofs or cleaning their furnaces or little basic home maintenance, preventative maintenance things that people are not doing, and perhaps because they don't have the knowledge. So we're focusing on prevention with that.
Modular homes versus stick-built and tiny homes. Agreement. Modular homes are actually more suitable for the southern communities than the Northwest Territories, where our climate is a little bit more tempered. Northern communities, I agree, it's probably not the best structure for it. It's certainly not good for community development, economic development within the northern communities.
So we did a project, we tried to get modular units developed in the Northwest Territories so they could sustain themselves and take off. We've done that. We're looking at more different types of housing units, not only stick-built, not only modular, but also tiny homes; a lot of different options, and I've been working with IRC looking at even Inuit-based and culturally appropriate homes. So we're looking at all different types of housing units.
Vacant homes. I was floored as well when I actually took over and found out that we have market homes in the communities that have been sitting there for a couple of years. We will be re-profiling all of those; if they're not going to be used for market homes, then maybe they would go into a homeownership or a public housing unit, so those will all be taken off.
Less money for housing. The federal money, we've been lobbying big-time with the federal government. We've gotten the partnership with the three territories. We've done a northern strategy, a northern business plan. We've gotten a commitment from the federal government that they will do a tri-territorial housing strategy specifically. In fact, I have been lobbying so hard that the last time I went to an FPT meeting they asked me when was I going home because I spoke so much, and I told them I will go home when I get what I want. So I am working hard to get the federal money, just to let you know that.
The survey, yes, it was a long time coming, I do recognize that. It will not be, hopefully, long action plans; I am not going to allow that to happen. We have been talking about it. We will be meeting fairly quickly here to decide how we're going to dissimulate all the information. We will be looking at the easy situations, the medium, and the hard situations. The easy ones are things that affect just the Housing Corporation, that don't affect any other departments or any other government, so things like student housing and things like that, people leaving their homes for wellness, they should not be penalized. Those things will be off the table; we will be dealing with those ones.
The medium ones, the long-term ones, things that implement other departments, like land leases, et cetera, will be a little harder to deal with because we are dealing interdepartmentally and sometimes inter-jurisdictionally with some things, so we'll be looking at that.
Reducing the level of core need. Yes. So there hasn't been a lot, in all honesty, and we do have to look at that. I am anxious to get this survey done. My thinking is, in all honesty, it's costing us an average of $22,000 per year per public housing unit. We give CARE major program to people every 10 years of $100,000. That means to me, my little layman thinking, is that every five years we're spending over $100,000 to keep a person in a public housing unit. So why would we not support those people in getting into homeownership? We'd be saving $100,000 every five years by doing that. If we can move more people into homeownership, then we can actually provide more public housing units, so it's a win-win situation. So that is one of the things we will be looking at, and how to do that.
Economic development in housing. I beg to differ. I believe that economic development is critical for housing when people actually make a decent income. One of my fellow Members has said many times a good job is the best social program. I'm not 100 per cent sure I would agree 100 per cent with that, but I do agree that people who have secure income are better off and can afford more things in life if their income is sufficient. So I think that jobs are important to address the needs of not only housing but all social issues.
Working with other governments, Aboriginal governments. It was an easy win-win for me; it just makes logical sense. So not only are we working with IRC, we are working with other Aboriginal governments and municipal governments, and that has nothing to do with land claims. The Member has gone, but it has nothing to do with land claims, it's only if people approach us and want to work with us, then I am willing to work with them. Because the more governments that are working towards housing people in their communities, the better the services, the more services we will be able to provide. It's a win-win situation.
The lack of community plans. Like I said, when we developed the survey, that's why we've asked people what are their communities they live in. Because actually with the survey completion we are able to, using the Survey Monkey -- thank goodness for technology -- we can actually tap in and say what did people in -- I'll just use: what did people in Yellowknife want, and we can actually get rid of everybody else's surveys and only look at those replies from Yellowknife. So it will be easy to do community plans when we eyeball the inputs. We will be basing further work, future budgets, future program delivery, based on what the communities themselves say; it won't be a one-size-fits-all.
Insurance and land tenure. Huge issues. We need to address it. It's kind of a hard issue because it's not good to invest up to $100,000 if people don't have insurance or they don't own their own land. However, maybe we can restructure our programming so that insurance and land tenure is part of the package when we're giving out the $100,000, is that maybe we provide that. So there are options we'll be looking at. However, in saying that, I will not support squatting. There are people in the communities who are living on Crown land or -- what's the term for the territories? Oh, Indian band lands.
So if we start to provide renovations to theirs or stuff then we set a precedent, and that is not appropriate. So I've been asking people, if they illegally have houses on lands that are not theirs, to deal with the bands, with their communities, to try to get that secured. It's not a precedent that I want to start doing, too, because it tells people that it's okay, you can just go anywhere and build a home, and I don't personally believe that's the right way.
Repairs. We do need more repairs in the communities; however, we need more than just repairs. The problem is is that -- like, I went into a community just over a month ago with just over 200 homes in that community. In the one summer alone we fixed 108 windows. So we also need training with that.
So we need training, we need a lot to do. We're working with the federal government and we also have to be careful we don't put too much money in because there is also contractor capacity within communities, and so what I'm noticing now is even we're carrying forward some capital from last year because sometimes contractors and communities don't have the capacity to do it. So we want to make sure we don't over-flood the market. Thank you, Mr. Chair.