Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I have talked about the challenges in Nunakput and the small communities across the territory for rental arrears. The housing clients who live in our communities, so many of them are struggling with rental arrears. Arrears can accumulate for reasons beyond the tenant's control. Illness, unemployment, seasonal employment, and rental charges that are too high based on the former T4 system; now the Minister fixed that for us last week. These things, or a combination of them, can put a person into arrears.
Once someone is in arrears, it is really hard to climb out of that hole. Many public housing residents are living paycheque to paycheque need every cent of every cheque on a daily basis, let alone finding money to pay off debt that we put them in. The higher arrears get, the lower the chances that the tenant is going to be able to pay them off. The consequences of being in arrears cause people a lot of worries and a lot of sleepless nights.
A recent housing study done by a researcher from the NWT found that "rental arrears with the Housing Corporation make it impossible to access public housing in the Northwest Territories, and affect one's references when trying to access private rental housing." Which we don't have in our communities, Mr. Speaker.
Still, many people do their best, but it can be discouraging in trying to get ahead. Some people give up, Mr. Speaker, because it feels like they will never be free from arrears, which puts them in a vicious cycle they can't get rid of.
To help these people, I would like to see the Housing Corporation put a rental arrears abatement program in place, modeled on the Department of Finance's Property Tax Arrears Program. This program would help someone who is doing their best to pay off their arrears by forgiving a portion of them, not the total arrears, but, every payment that they do, a portion comes off it, as well, in kind. This would provide an incentive to people who have arrears and are not making back payments, to start it off. It would give positive encouragement to those who are trying their best to pay off arrears, by enabling them to reach their goal more quickly. It would also demonstrate that the GNWT is not using arrears as a means to punish the ones who have not paid their rent.