Caroline Cochrane

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. The key component to addressing housing within the NWT at this point for the NWT Housing Corporation is to utilize the community survey that we will be sending out to identify the needs within each community and developing our plan based on each community’s identified priorities. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

None of the community governments have approached me and said that they were looking to take on housing, but I know that it is something that we need to do in the future. Any of the governments that is actually wanting to take on the housing role, I am more than willing to support them with that, understanding that I don't want to set people up to fail, so I don't want to just dump it on them. I want to make sure that we have a solid plan that they can have the capacity to be able to take it on and succeed with that, and I would love to have a pilot government. If anyone wants to come forward...

Yes, the Housing Corporation is actually… The reason that we’re putting out the survey is to identify within each community what they define as their priorities because we do recognize that one size does not fit all and we need to take more of a community focus within our housing programs. We are open to looking at every program that we currently provide and other options that the communities may put forward.

Specific to the Hay River Reserve, there was an issue where there were units that sat empty for many years because of land tenure. When I came into governance, and prior to me as well, it was brought up as an issue. We worked on it very diligently, and I'm really pleased to report actually that we’ve negotiated with the federal government so that we do have land tenure and that we can actually put those units to use within the community. There are still more... I think there's four more; I may be incorrect. But I think that we're still looking at working with that with the federal government...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I think at the GNWT level that the Ministers and the Premier have addressed, have identified that communication within all of our departments is an area that we need to work further on. I have given direction to the Housing Corporation to develop a communication plan. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

Again, as stated, we are trying to support northern businesses. The next round that came in are all northern businesses that have applied. We didn't get any southern people that have applied for them, so you will see a change within this fiscal year.

The NWT Housing Corporation is well aware of the issues of the one barge going into some of the northern communities, and so we are really being proactive and trying to get all of our material for this year actually ready and to be shipped on the next NTCL boat that's going out.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Again, I would really love to be able to say that there would be a goal within a short period that says that people would not stay in emergency shelters for five years. However, like we had stated, we are working in partnership with the City of Yellowknife. Within three years, they plan to have 20 people housed, within the shelter format, we're looking to have 30 people, that's only 50 people. Even after those people are housed, we will still have a huge population of people that are homeless, so I think that the goal of five days within a shelter is still a ways off...

That's actually a very difficult question because I recognize that the term of the government is only four years, which doesn't give us a lot of time and really hard to evaluate during that period of time. I am hoping that the next Legislative Assembly will carry forward the work and to move forward within the Housing First model and to get people more independently housed. There will always be a need for emergency shelters though, and that's just the reality of shelters throughout the world, and especially within the Northwest Territories because this community of Yellowknife is a very...

We do have a program currently, called the PATH program that is providing assistance to territorial homeownership programs, that people can actually purchase homes within the communities. There’s different rates depending on the community. We do an assessment of the building, based on the community and then the… I mean, sometimes actually the units are actually given just for the land costs. We’re revisiting that as well because we do recognize that very soon the operating and maintenance money, CMHC funding, will be expiring. We need to come up with a plan. We’re kind of looking at ideas...