Thank you, Mr. Speaker. My questions are for the Minister of Housing. Does the report recommending the return to the Public Housing Rental Subsidy to the Housing Corporation identify development of the arrears as a problem?
Thank you, Mr. Jacobson. The honourable Minister responsible for the NWT Housing Corporation, Mr. Robert McLeod.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. The report, which I’m tabling this afternoon, makes no specific reference to the arrears that may have been accumulated during the period when the responsibility for assessments was with ECE.
Does the Minister acknowledge that some of the problems with the arrears were created by the system and not necessarily the tenants themselves?
I do acknowledge that there is a serious arrears problem, to the tune of about $10 million. A lot of these arrears may have been accumulated before the transfer, so we can’t say that this was a direct response of the transfer. The local housing authorities, when the transfer first went over, realized there were issues with the assessment. This was all new being rolled out. They were very good at recognizing that if you weren’t assessed properly, they would adjust it and your arrears would automatically go down. So they’ve taken steps to deal with that when the transfer first happened. I admit there is a serious problem with arrears.
I don’t think it was Housing’s problem; I think it was ECE’s problem. The gap between market rent and the subsidized rent is too much for some clients. When the Public Housing Rental Subsidy is returned to the Housing Corporation, will the Minister ensure that the rents are not too high so clients could be able to manage?
I have discussed previously that we will be looking at the rent scale and some of the issues that are raised by the tenants out there. I can commit to the Member that the process is in place and we’re looking at ways to work with clients to make sure that they are paying the rent that’s due and that the local housing authorities are receiving rents so that they can continue to operate. Because with the declining CMHC funding, the collection of rental arrears becomes even more important now and that gives a lot of the LHOs more funding and ability to deliver the programs and maintenance to the units.
Thank you, Mr. McLeod. Final supplementary, Mr. Jacobson.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Some families in the communities that I represent, since 2007 they’re telling me they had no arrears prior to that 2007 changeover from the Housing Corporation to ECE. We’ve got people that have been evicted already. You have 20 people in some houses in the communities. That’s not right. Will the Minister consider bringing forward a bill to forgive the arrears that have developed because of this gap that was created in the system since 2007? Thank you.
Mr. Speaker, we fully understand that there was an accumulation of arrears during this time. As far as bringing a bill forward, I do know that some LHOs sometimes will write off arrears, but that then goes to the Housing Corporation to collect the arrears. As far as forgiving the bill, we have to be very careful here that if we do this, we set a precedent, and even arrears that were accumulated before the transfer are going to obviously be expected to be forgiven. If there’s a way that we can work with tenants to try and work on their arrears and, like you said, the LHOs really recognize the fact that some of this happened because of the assessment and the timeliness of it and they made adjustments. So we have to be very careful as to how far we want to go with this. Thank you.
Thank you, Mr. McLeod. The honourable Member for Kam Lake, Mr. Ramsay.
