Thank you, Mr. Chair. Yeah, that's pretty unfortunate because like I stated there, the homeless shelter in Inuvik only has capacity for so many people, and you see residents from other communities trying to go there and they're told that they have no room, and the residents from the local town -- like, from the town of Inuvik are given first priority because they're the ones that live in the community.
Aklavik has a program that's administered by the Aklavik Indian band. I think they have up to four units that assist these homeless people with accommodations. They're given some kind of program where they can live in a home and live there until they can find suitable long-term arrangements. I've spoken to some of the residents that occupy these units, and I've also spoken to some of the administrators who administer this program, and it seems to be working. And it'll be good if the department can look at providing these services in the other communities.
I'm not going to ask you a question because I think you already answered my question about advocating or helping homeless people within the smaller communities. It's just unfortunate that -- looking at your emergency shelters, and it's gone down significantly from 2023-2024 to 2024-2025. So I don't see any room for advancing this, these programs to other smaller communities. It's only going to get worse because the people that are homeless, they get in trouble with the housing so it's local housing authorities by getting into arrears. And if they move out of their place and in the future, they want to apply, they're going to be told that they have arrears and those arrears have to be cleared off before they're even considered, then they're considered homeless. So it's just -- would be good if the department can, in the future, look at this homelessness more carefully because it's -- I lived in this -- in this environment for five months at one time. And you turn to alcohol and other -- myself, I just used alcohol, but I didn't consider myself an alcoholic because I was just merely surviving from one day to the next and it's not -- you can see that in every community. I see that in my own home community, and it's -- you feel helpless because you can't help your brothers, your sisters, your cousins, your community members. And these people just need a little help, because alcohol is the only detterrent they may have in the event that, you know, just surviving. I didn't consider myself an alcoholic because I overcame it. I mean, I'm still battling, but I've been able to overcome it because I was surviving from one day to the next. And if the department can help these people by, you know, keeping them in their own hometown, where their residents can maybe give them assistance too, by surviving from one day to the next. So it's more of a comment is to see if in the future that you can -- the department can look at providing these kinds of services that's provided in Aklavik and administered by a local Indigenous government. Thank you, Mr. Chair.