Robert C. McLeod

Thank you, Mr. Chair. I think our track record has proven that we do try to assist people in getting into their own home, and I think it’s one of the reasons that we’re in a situation now where our focus has to be on more multi-unit type configurations for a lot of younger people. A lot of the families that are able to get into homeownership, I think in the last… Since homeownership started way back in the SHAG and HAP house days, I think we’ve got about 2,700 units that we help families get into through our homeownership program. We’ve raised our income threshold. On the access to...

Mr. Speaker, I will commit to watching over this. I think it’s a commitment that we made to committee when we were speaking to them. Again, it is fairly early in the game and we’re still getting our hands or our mind wrapped around the liabilities and all that we inherited and what we can and can’t do. But I will commit to the Member and to this Legislative Assembly that we will be watching these developments and the liabilities securities that are required like a hawk and make sure that any future cleanup, if there needs to be, is covered. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

Thank you. Again, I’m not sure of that particular one. The bones in the unit itself are pretty good. So if there’s some work that needs to be done in there, I’m sure the LHO will identify it, but it’s about 20 years old, I believe, 20 or 25 years old. The structure itself is still pretty sound and if there is some major work that needs to be done in there, then the local housing organization will identify it, but I don’t know, again, the details for sure. We’ll find out exactly what the plan is for there.

Our numbers we have are pretty high level numbers, as far as the actual house numbers and...

Thank you, Mr. Chair. Vacancies play a large role in how we determine where we allocate our capital dollars. Obviously, you have got one community that has more vacancies and they can be vacant for a number of different reasons. I’m just trying to find the numbers here as to our vacancies across the Northwest Territories. Fifty public housing units that are vacant and available for occupancy, and again the local housing organization could be in the process of allocating them right now. We have approximately 135 units that are under repair, and once those are done they will be allocated.

The...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Prairie Creek operation is a fairly complex operation as I believe some of the land is still on land that is retained by the federal government, so we’re in the process of trying to iron out the details to make sure that… We’re still in negotiations with these folks as to the security that is being required of them.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. I don’t know, we’ve got a couple of major M and I’s that are slated for Tsiigehtchic. I don’t have the exact, but this year we have two major M and I’s that are slated for Tsiigehtchic. As to the details of which units those are, I don’t have that right now. It may or may not include the unit that the Member is speaking about. So, we’ll get the details as to what two units they’re planning on doing major retrofits on. I think over the next couple of years we have four major M and I’s that are going into Tsiigehtchic. So whether that includes the burned unit or not, I’m...

Thank you, Mr. Chair. We plan on having a briefing with committee, I think next week, on the latest findings and Community Needs Survey. So we are looking forward to having that discussion with them that I think is taking place next week. Again, we appreciate the Member’s comments on commending the corporation on the work that they are doing.

As far as the income threshold, when they are applying for the PATH program, the pathway to homeownership, we increased the threshold because we heard the concern that there were a lot of people that were just over SNIP and not being able to qualify for...

Thank you, Mr. Chair. As we put those six into stock, we have to take six out and they’re replaced. So they’ll replace six older units because we just don’t have the funds from CMHC, again, to deal with that. There’s a lot of CMHC numbers that were tied to particular pieces of infrastructure. So we put six in and we take six out. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. I appreciate the Member’s comments about the Housing Corp has done quite well. We always look for some positive feedback and we appreciate that.

As far as the empty units in Fort Good Hope, we have had some preliminary discussions with the community and private individuals on those units. The one thing we want to make sure of is that we do our assessments to make sure they’re free from any hazardous type of material before we put them out, and when we do put them out, our preference would be to go to a full public process where everybody has an opportunity to access these...

We have no new public housing or no public housing replacement units for Detah/Ndilo in this fiscal year. As far as the long-term plan, I would have to see what our long-term plan is.

Again, we have the major retrofits that we’re planning on doing there. As far as the long-term plan, again, we’re using the recently completed Community Needs Survey to help us to determine our next allocation of capital projects, and as soon as we have that, then we will share that with committee, obviously, and we’ll have an opportunity to have a discussion on the Community Needs Survey in our briefing with...