We finished page 5-54 and 5-53, 5-55 and we are moving on to 5-56 now. Mr. Bromley.
Thank you. Could I get agreement, Mr. Chair, to go back to page 5-54?
The Member is seeking unanimous consent to go back to 5-55. Agreed?
Agreed.
Are there any nays? Alright. We’ll go back to 5-55. Mr. Beaulieu
Mr. Chairman, I have a motion.
Go ahead, Mr. Beaulieu.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I move that this committee strongly recommends that the Housing Corporation take immediate and comprehensive action to assess all housing association programs with a view to increasing the income thresholds that are used to determine client access to the various housing programs; and further, that the Housing Corporation establish reasonable income thresholds that better reflect the current state of the northern economy particularly the high cost of living in small communities and that the programs be designed to address affordability, suitability and adequacy of housing stock by encouraging self-reliance in meeting these housing needs. Thank you, Mr. Chair.
Thank you, Mr. Beaulieu. A motion is on the floor and is being distributed. The motion is in order. To the motion. Mr. Beaulieu.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I was not going to speak to the motion. The motion is fairly self-explanatory but just a couple of small points to make. The main issue seems to be that the Housing Corporation is able to build homes faster than they are able to find clients. So what’s happening is a lot of the clientele is unable to access the homes as the current income situation stands, core need income thresholds, I should say. With the income thresholds, they are either too low on one hand or too high at the other hand. Let me see, right; too high at the bottom end and too low at the upper end. So what this motion is trying to do is to not move the window this way, so that people on the bottom are also given opportunities that are just not making enough but with the proper counselling would be able to get into these programs and people at the upper end that are just over the current income thresholds but for that reason are not able to access and are also unable to access other types of financing at the levels of subsidy that are being offered. So we recognize that the majority of these housing programs are bank funded now, privately funded, so what is happening is the income is just not sufficient enough for the individuals to go to bank financing easily and the subsidy portions are not big enough to allow that to occur. So this is indicating that we need to look at the high cost of living again and maybe open up the window a bit more at both ends and allow people into the program. Thank you, Mr. Chair.
Thank you, Mr. Beaulieu. Next on the list is Mr. Menicoche.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I will be voting in favour of the motion. That is something that my constituency and residents of my constituency have always said, is that when they go to apply for NWT Housing Corporation programming, often they are saying they are making too much. This frustrates Nahendeh residents to no end, because the reality is that there are dual income households out there. There is a good reason for that, Mr. Chairman. It is only because they are trying to address their high cost of living and they are working hard to achieve those ends. A lot of them, too, are not only...Well, the majority of the workforce in my riding is, of course, government, but a lot of them are in the private sector. A lot of them are business owners. For them, too, the guidelines kind of discourage them from using our program.
We just had a discussion earlier with this department about the ability to recover rent and revenue from Housing Corporation clients. If we are looking for new clients, Mr. Chairman, and looking for stable revenue, then who better to approve for our programming than somebody that does have a steady income, maybe dual income? These are the people that want help and we should be helping but our current policy dictates that our community income thresholds are a certain range. I cannot believe that range is so small. I know that people are being turned away or denied. In some cases they know they make too much so they don’t even bother taking an application. That frustrates me too, Mr. Chairman, because everybody is entitled to due diligence. I believe that applications should be taken.
I would like us to have a good look at it. In fact, I am expecting that this motion will pass, Mr. Chairman. I would like to see it effective April 1st. We have a new cycle of programming that is going to happen come April 1st, new people applying. Many of them are actually the same people but at the same time there are dual income families out there, and they could be single as well but they are exceeding the threshold. This gives them the ability for us to deliver our housing programs right now. That is a fact that we are building houses but nobody is qualifying for them, Mr. Chairman. This is one of the reasons; you either make too much or else you make too little. We have to expand and increase the range of the income threshold and allow more of our people to access these programs.
I think one of the frustrating things is in the communities, people walking by empty units. They have been empty for about a year and knowing that they almost qualified or else they didn’t qualify because they made too much but they are staying in overcrowded situations and their own homes. Maybe it is their children or cousins that may now be allowed to qualify, thereby increasing or lowering our frustration about overcrowded homes. That is why I will be voting in favour of this motion.
I would just like to say to the Minister and to the government that, look at implementation date of April 1, 2009. It is a policy change. It can be done. That is something we really should look at doing immediately and I sure hate to have government just take it under advisement, Mr. Chairman. That is something that is important. It needs action. I believe that we should get action on it. Thank you very much.
Thank you, Mr. Menicoche. Next on my list is Mr. Hawkins.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I will be supporting this motion. As I have come to be aware over the last few years of the government here, it is not unusual for the department to put houses in communities that we can’t put anybody in and so these houses sit empty. It becomes a real eyesore to the community. It bothers them that they are sitting there and nobody is in there. If this adjustment by playing with the threshold we can get one more family into a safe and secure household, then I certainly think it is certainly worth looking at. It is a noble effort. Mr. Chairman, that is all I will be saying.
Thank you, Mr. Hawkins. Mr. Bromley.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I would like to focus in on the last phrase of this motion and highlight that and my support for it. I think we had a number of discussions in the House and in committee on what the opportunities are for encouraging self-reliance in housing programs and to meet housing needs. I think there really is a huge opportunity here and that can address our costs as well as our broader goals of bumping up skills development and self-esteem and so on; the things that go along with developing self-reliance and additional skills. I hope that that would be a prominent aspect of this program review.
There are a lot of people in our communities in social housing that are not employed and yet they are physically and mentally quite capable. This is an opportunity to, rather than just throw money at it, throw some innovation, some well-designed programs that capture that resource and put them to work in ways that benefit both our housing needs and our broader goals. I will be supporting the motion and appreciate the Member from Tu Nedhe for bringing this forward. Thank you.
Thank you, Mr. Bromley. To the motion.
Question.
Question has been called. I will call upon Mr. Beaulieu to conclude debate on the motion.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Again, I don’t have a whole lot to add to it. I think the majority of what had to be said here has been said. I think this will also help the government, because allowing more people into homeownership does create a bit of a market. A better private market we have in all of our communities, the better off we all are.
As people know in the Housing Corporation, communities with markets have much lower needs, on a percentage basis, than non-market communities. Some of the communities where there is absolutely no market, the needs are very high to extremely high. If this could work towards creating more homeownership in the communities and works towards building a little bit of a market, then we will have achieved our goal. Thank you.
Thank you, Mr. Beaulieu. Question has already been called.
---Carried
We are on page 5-55, information item, programs and district operations, operations expenditure summary. Mr. Bromley.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I am wondering where we are at in the energy evaluations of the 100 homes, and if there is anything the Minister can report on what the results are to date, and if there is an estimate of what the renovation costs will be on average to get those homes up to EGH 80 standard. Thank you.
Thank you, Mr. Bromley. Minister McLeod.
Mr. Chairman, we will have Mr. Anderson respond to that question.
Thank you. Mr. Anderson.
Mr. Chairman, we are working through getting the information together for our Modernization and Improvement Program. We have been training our technical staff to be home energy evaluators. They have gone through the first phase of training for that. They are getting the skill sets to do a proper evaluation of the upgrades that are required. We anticipate it is probably going to be in the range of $30,000 to $40,000 per unit to get them up to the EnerGuide 80 standard. Thank you.
Thank you to Mr. Anderson for those comments. Do we know how many units have been completed to date? Thank you.
By the end of March, we will have the 100 evaluations completed by the end of this fiscal year. Thank you.
Thank you for that response. On the adequacy of housing, has this now been built in as a criteria in the measurement of housing adequacy where it is a sort of thing in energy efficiency terms? Thank you.
The approach that we take, whether it is our own public housing units or homeownership units, we first look at health and safety as our first priority and then we have to look at structural issues, foundations, roofing systems, things of that nature, and energy efficiency is the third part of that process. Thank you.
Thank you, Mr. Anderson. Mr. Yakeleya.
Mr. Chairman, just on the adequacy, suitability and affordability problems in our regions, I know that Nahendeh and the Sahtu have pretty high core need numbers percentage-wise. I guess what I want to ask the Minister in terms of bringing down these numbers in these two different regions under these programs and district operations, is this the goal of this corporation to look at where there are high needs? They continue to be high until we have adequate funding to build in these regions because there are very unique challenges in the regions in terms of delivery, isolation and also there are, as the Minister indicated, some land tenure issues. Is this a goal of this Minister? The numbers seem to be yet quite astonishing in Colville Lake where there is the definition of suitability, affordability and adequacy. According to your definition, this is horrible for this 76 percent. I just want to see if it is the goal of the corporation to look at these significant numbers and add some resources where it would be satisfactory to the Members.
Thank you, Mr. Yakeleya. Minister McLeod.
Mr. Chairman, that is our goal, to reduce the need in all the different areas. The numbers the Member is referring to, the 76 percent and the core need rating was from four years ago. We have, since then, put a lot of units on the ground in the last three years. We put close to 500 units in the communities. We expect the 2009 core need rating to be significantly different. We still will set our budgets according to the core need based on unit costs and the different construction needs in the area.
Mr. Chairman, I should have made a clarification. The numbers I am using are 2004. We had a discussion yesterday with the Minister and we look forward to the 2009 core needs report.
I also know that, through the Affordable Housing Initiative, they target Sahtu for 94 houses or units. I’m not too sure if they met that target yet. I think it is pretty close to it. I understand that there are some units that couldn’t be built in Colville Lake and some of the communities because of challenges that the corporation couldn’t resolve in time, so they had to make some decisions. I also understand that the increase in construction in some of our isolated communities causes some problems in terms of construction in the communities, so other units are being transferred from some agreements to other communities. That is why I am asking, because we have certain challenges in the Sahtu in terms of the ice road, the isolation, the barging.
Sometimes these packages don’t come fully equipped with the right window or door or something is missing. There are other stories that I think the Minister will be aware of. That is why I am asking with these high core needs in our communities. I could be proven wrong in a couple of months by the 2009 survey, but I don’t think I am not too far off in terms of our core needs. We have not come along that far. We are still along with Nahendeh to be the highest regions in terms of dollars being spent on housing as when I read the housing report that other regions seem to be receiving more dollars in terms of funding for units that are well below the core needs percentage in the Sahtu. That also contributes the number of those factors in terms of how this is spread out there. I would like to ask the Minister again, would he make a concerted effort to put dollars where there is most need under the definition of the Housing Corporation’s suitability, affordability and the adequacy of homes? Would the Minister give some consideration to go the extra mile to make sure that these numbers do come down and stay down?
Mr. Chairman, we do, indeed, follow the core need assessment to allocate our budget. It is a measurement that allows us to see where the actual needs are in the community and in what areas. It is difficult to tie dollars for repair or for homeownership based on percentages related to core need. For example, 76 percent of Colville has demonstrated they are in core need, but that is 25 families. Overall, we have 2,300 units that have been identified as core need and 240 of them are in the Sahtu, so that is only 10 percent.
Mr. Chairman, we try to invest in all the different areas that need to be addressed. We use this measurement as a guide for us to try to distribute it fairly. The need is high across the North. We recognize that. We are in a situation where we have more dollars than we have had historically. We will try to make the best use of that. Thank you.
Fair enough. I guess we can always say that we can interpret these numbers however we want to justify our decisions as to where we spend money. I would say that, in the areas where the core needs are down, some of the areas that have an all-weather road system are easier. It’s cheaper to get materials to and from communities where there is accessibility to electricians, plumbers and carpenters and they don’t have to use the barging system. I guess what I’m asking with these numbers that you have produced is how these monies are distributed with your core need. I certainly would see that in Colville Lake; 25 families. These families are fairly large in Colville Lake. They don’t have the traditional two or three kids. They have a packed house, even in the community of Tulita. There are families there that have six or seven children who live in three-bedroom houses. I think we need to look at those and see where it really counts in terms of providing these houses and look at Tulita when the winter road finishes in March, the first barge season if we are lucky, if NTCL could be there by the end of June or July and we don’t know what material will be, so there are lots of things to consider.
I think the Minister has indicated that they are looking at different ways they can bring in material. Sometime, Mr. Chairman, these materials, the whole package is not quite complete when they arrive in communities like Fort Good Hope. They have to wait, and when they do wait for the material, it is already fall time. So there are lots of challenges. I don’t think he is a stranger to the uniqueness of building in the communities and I think it is taken into consideration that costs escalate when you have to look at these different factors.
I agree with the Minister in looking at these different challenges, but also I think his department staff needs to look at these unique challenges sometimes. I think they do. I just hope they could put a little more emphasis on what areas need to be paid a little more attention, because these houses are certainly needed in all communities, I agree with you. Some of them are needed more than others. We’ve got health conditions piled on that. I am running out of time, so I don’t want to get into that. I want to leave it at that, Mr. Chairman.
Thank you, Mr. Yakeleya. I didn’t actually hear a question. Does the Minister want to respond to his comments?
Mr. Chairman, the Member raises a lot of issues. We totally agree there is a need to look at unique situations. When we do look at the core need and we adjust for a number of varying factors including transportation, the condition of units, overcrowding, costs, we also look at the condition ratings, the waiting lists and the LHOs and we try to make our decisions accordingly. This year, probably in a couple of weeks, we will be coming back to the committee to show what the plans for this year are, with the new dollars also included. There are a number of other requests that we need to report on and we will provide all that information to committee as soon as we can.
Thank you, Minister McLeod. Next on the list is Mr. Bromley.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I am sure the Minister gets this question in his travels, but I do have constituents that raise it with me, that work throughout the Northwest Territories in areas related to housing. When will the government bring back the HAP program and I wonder if the Minister can tell us if that is something that might be under consideration and/or if there is an equivalent program out there. But it certainly seems to be something that people are interested in. In particular, I think, part of the attraction for us should be the fact that, again, it helps increase the skills of the homeowners and their ability to maintain it and so on. There are a lot of good reasons to like that program and I would appreciate any perspective from the Minister on that. Thank you.
Thank you, Mr. Bromley. Minister McLeod.
Mr. Chairman, right now with our housing program choices, we don’t have any intention of bringing the HAP program back per se. We are bringing a close cousin to this program. We haven’t titled it or given it any name yet. It is probably a basic housing package or traditional housing package that would allow people to work with us and build their own home, something that would fall within the criteria of forgivable mortgage. It has been raised by a number of the Members, Mr. Yakeleya and Mr. Krutko, and also members of the Small Communities committee, so we are trying to put a design together for presentation for consideration for committee to look at and see and give us their input of what they think. It will be a very basic, very simple design and something that people with low incomes, with small families could live in at a relatively cheap cost.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman. That is good to hear and thank you for those remarks. Would that be for implementation in this coming fiscal year?
Mr. Chairman, we would like to have it out for this year. That is what we are aiming for. I can’t say for certain that we will. We will be bringing something forward to committee for consideration when we start looking at the other initiatives and issues including budget allocations, we will have the first chance to present it to committee for their input and feedback.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Another issue that my constituents have brought forward involved in work, other people, is the issue -- and I may have brought this up last year and I don’t know what has happened on it -- but some LHOs, local housing organizations that achieve energy efficiencies, for example, and thus savings, they generate reduced costs, are then given budgets that are reduced the following year and are in effect being penalized for the efficiencies that they have gained. They would enjoy the opportunity to use those efficiencies the following year and maybe generate larger savings eventually towards their reduced budget. Is the Minister familiar with this issue and would he have any perspective to offer on it? Thank you.
Thank you, Mr. Bromley. Mr. Anderson.
Yes, thank you, Mr. Chairman. In terms of utilities, the amount of effort that we put into modernization and improvements, and with the additional funds we will be receiving from the federal government, we will be looking to put forward a very significant program for this year. With that, we are going to see some savings, we believe, in utilities. But the way we have been running the program to date is that we keep that money in the pool for the whole Public Housing Program, because there are cases were we have to move money between one organization and another and if you end up with significant deficits in your budgets in one local housing organization, it is very difficult to have those savings moved over to a different organization. Thank you.
Thank you, Mr. Anderson. Mr. Bromley.
