Yes, thank you. I'm glad that they mention that. But, you know, especially in my region, Tlicho region, we are in housing crisis. We have lots of housing that are sitting vacant, like, for many years. And it's not just that. There are some other houses in the community that are occupied by tenants and they keep complaining that there's all kind of issues with the unit. And they keep calling the LHO office, but they don't have the capacity, so. And some of them they don't have the training do the job.
And I know that we need to -- we need to help our locals to get the training that they need, you know, so that they can do the job. And there's a lot of them. And they're getting younger, some of these staff. So I think what we should do is that yes, if 254 isn't enough then we need do more to help build up our local youth that are working for the departments. But not only that, the administrations need a lot of work because like I was saying before in my Member's statement, some of the arrears that occurred, it is from -- they are basing the rent on last year's income. And nobody comes and work with the tenants. Only once a year or once their notice of assessment comes in, then many of these tenants are given a huge bill. And some of them are not working. Last year maybe they worked; this year they're not working. And so that's how a lot of rent accumulated. And even Tlicho region alone, we have like $1.4 million arrears. And that's probably based on the administration because nobody is contacting these tenants.
And it's not from not paying rent alone but it's just that once -- you know, like, once they gather all the information and in July/August, some of the people they start calling and saying I just got $14,000 bill, you know, housing bill. And they're still paying max. So these are subsidized housing; these are social housing. And it's -- I don't think, you know, it's -- I don't see it as a social housing if you're getting the tenants to pay max. If it is subsidized, then what they should do is that they should be working with the local based on the current income. Last year income, yes, there was -- yes, it was a good year for employment but this year it's not so all those things have to be taken into consideration when they're doing this.
So I know that that's where a lot of arrears have occurred. So in administration, at the administration level, there needs to be more training provided for the LHO office and also for the trades, for the young people that are working there. We need to build them up. We need more than just -- like here, you know one position is sunset. Like, and I know in my region in Behchoko we don't have that many staff working there to accommodate to work on over 200 public units. And we only have few staff, you know.
So I know they need to do a better job. Not only that too, and so I heard the president said about handbook, tenant's handbook. That's good. It's good they have that, you know. But 2018 status report for the GNWT for my region, we have the low literacy rate. We have the low graduation rate. If that is low, how do you expect these people to read? Is it going to be written in Tlicho language too as well or the administration team, are they going to be going around to the Tlicho community or to the people and tell them and explain to them what the handbook is about? How are they going to accommodate? How are they going to implement this? Like, what are they going to do? Like, just give it out and then just -- it's going to be forgotten. So how are they going to -- I just want to know how they're going to carry out, you know, like delivering the handbook.