Thank you, Mr. Krutko. Minister McLeod.
Mr. Chairman, when these folks are brought on board, there is usually a bit of training and they are given an update on all of the policies and that and everything that is expected of them. They are fairly aware of all of the policies as far as the Housing Corporation goes. Thank you.
Mr. Chairman, again, why is it the Inuvik regional office does not support negotiated contracting policy?
Mr. Chairman, I think the office has proven in the past that they do support negotiated contracts. There is an opportunity for contractors to build up their capacity. I do know that within the past four or five years there have been nine or 10 negotiated contracts in the region. That is allowing a lot of the small-town contractors to build up their capacity. They do support negotiated contracts. They have let negotiated contracts. Thank you.
Mr. Chairman, can I get a copy and a list of the negotiated contracts that have been let in regards to where those contracts have been let? Thank you.
Mr. Chairman, we will be pleased to provide that information to the Member.
Thank you, Minister McLeod. Next on my list is Mr. Bromley.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I note the monitoring aspect of the programs and district operations. I note also that much of our public housing programs are delivered in thermal communities where the financial and environmental costs of power are the greatest and perhaps the opportunity is there for reducing those costs. As part of the monitoring responsibility, what surveys are currently taking place that can help us describe the current electricity demand in our public housing? I am thinking particularly of the appliances that are provided in these facilities. Thank you.
Thank you, Mr. Bromley. Mr. Polakoff.
Mr. Chairman, over the last several years the Housing Corporation has been tracking the cost of electricity as well as power generation. I should also indicate that we have worked closely with the Arctic Energy Alliance, as well, in doing things like blower door testing and so on. In addition to that, a lot of the work that we have been doing recently, particularly over the last three years, has been related to housing design and making sure that our EnerGuide 80 standards have been addressed. Most recently, the Housing Corporation has also been certified as an EnerGuide 80 provider, so we do keep close contact or close monitoring of those costs and recognize those costs as one of the areas that we can reduce the expenditure profile of the Housing Corporation in light of the need to do business more effectively as well as in consideration of the fact that we are losing funding from CMHC.
Thank you, deputy minister, for that. I am aware of those programs. Those are good programs. I am thinking in a much more modest level here of simply the electrical appliances. I am sure the Minister knows that, in the last few years, efficiencies of appliances, washing machines and so on, you name it, have been so effective that the power demands for those appliances have decreased often in the order of one-quarter or one-third of the original what we might have seen five or eight years ago. But I don’t know if I have ever seen anything that indicates we know what appliances are in our houses. I am wondering, are there surveys happening that actually indicate the age and efficiency of our appliances relative to what they could be in our appliances today.
Thank you, Mr. Bromley. Minister McLeod.
Mr. Chairman, we continue to use all Energy Star appliances where we are doing new houses or replace them out. I do know a few programs that have occurred in the past where there was a program to replace a lot of the fridges because they were older fridges, and one community got, like, 75 fridges that were more energy efficient so they were able to go and change the fridges out. The LHOs usually do an inventory of older units so they know exactly what is in their units, what type of furnace they have in there, what make and model number and it goes right down to the appliance. So they are well aware of the appliances they have in there. If appliances become outdated, then LHOs have taken the initiative of replacing these because it helps their bottom line in the long run. Thank you.
Mr. Chairman, I wonder if the Minister could provide me with convincing information that that is, in fact, being done and that we do know what appliances are in our buildings and that we are not, in fact, continuing to pay for very inefficient appliances in many of our public houses. Thank you.
Mr. Chairman, I do know for a fact that a lot of these communities, LHOs do have an inventory and they keep track of the appliances they have in there. Having said that, if the Member wants written confirmation, we would be able to provide him with as much information as he needs. Thank you.
Mr. Chairman, I appreciate that commitment from the Minister. I just wanted to ask briefly, I know under our energy priority investments of the Energy Minister’s committee, there is $1 million that has been assigned to the NWT Housing Corporation the previous year, the current year, and it is now extended to next year. I am wondering how are those $3 million... How is $1 million planned for 2011-12 being expended? Thank you.
Thank you, Mr. Bromley. Mr. Anderson.
Mr. Chairman, yes we have allocated out the $1 million in our retrofit plan for next year on 28 public housing units and it’s a bunch of different priorities and a scope of work related to a heating system, windows, insulation upgrades, and those types of things that are all driven by the audits that were previously completed, the energy audit on our public housing units to make sure that we get the best value for our money. Thank you.
That’s all I had, Mr. Chair. It sounds like those dollars are being well spent. Thank you.
Thank you, Mr. Bromley. We’re on 5-53, the NWT Housing Corporation, information item, programs and district operations, operations expenditure summary. Mr. Yakeleya.
I’d like to ask the Minister about this section. Mr. Chair, the operations in Deline, there were some units that weren’t quite finished and completed. I went there a couple of weeks ago and the people were still out of those public housing units. They’re still boarded up, so to speak; no one was in them. I wanted to know why is that? They said it would only be a couple weeks, a couple months, now it’s been months and months and months and the people haven’t moved back into their rental units. I’m pretty sure that maybe it might get done this spring or maybe this summer. Can I ask the Minister how many houses are being renovated and when can these people move back into their houses?
Thank you, Mr. Yakeleya. Minister McLeod.
Thank you, Mr. Chair. We have a number of units across the Northwest Territories at any given time that are being renovated. Our preference is that a lot of this work happens during the summertime when it’s easy to do the work, but we run into some situations where the work is taking a little longer than expected. I’m not sure of the particular details of this situation, but I will commit to the Member that we’ll make some inquiries and we’ll follow up and see what is the status of these particular units and I’ll pass that information on to the Member. Thank you.
I look forward to the information. More importantly, I think the people who were asked to move out to make way for these renovations would be very much interested in knowing when they can move back into their units. So I hope that whatever needs to happen happens, to get them back into their units.
I want to ask the Minister if he would look into that situation and report back as to what happened, why there was such a delay to move people back into those units. It’s put a lot of stress on a lot of people in the community of Deline. People are overcrowded, they’re asked to move into other locations, other places where they’re not comfortable. So I wanted to ask the Minister if he could really take a look at this and see what happened. Why did this happen and why were these houses not completed as the tenants were told they would be? This was only supposed to take a couple of weeks and they’re losing faith in housing in terms of these renovations. So I would ask the Minister if he would do that for the people.
I will commit to the Member that we’ll prepare a briefing note with an update and status. I think there are approximately 25 units in Deline that are being renovated right now. So I’ll get an update and a status and expected finish date and then he can relay that on to his constituents. Thank you.
Thank you, Minister McLeod. I have nobody else on my list. Mr. Krutko.
Thank you, Mr. Chair. Again, I do have concerns with the loss of $7 million in the area of grants and contributions. I think that’s a major cut to the programs that a lot of people depend on, and knowing that there’s probably going to be less money but more demand, I’m wondering if the Housing Corporation has considered looking at maybe cutting back on some of the delivery side of the programs knowing that you have less dollars to allocate. Maybe look at less program officers on the ground, put the savings back into the programs to offset the $7 million cut from the federation government. I mean, if you look at it, that’s almost half of the grants and contribution monies that are there and I think people have to realize that there’s already a demand there and we have to find either the money internally or do an assessment on the programs and services we do deliver and we may have to cut out certain programs that we just cannot afford to deliver anymore. So has that review taken place or have we considered looking at that as an option, that we may have to cut back on the delivery side, and more importantly, how do we replace $7 million on a program that has $16 million in it? That’s a major loss of revenues and I think we know that there’s high demand in regard to these programs and services, especially from the maintenance side and from the seniors program preparedness side. I think, if anything, it’s going to have a direct affect on the residents of the Northwest Territories. So has there been a strategy or an idea of how we deal with this going forward?
Thank you, Mr. Krutko. Minister McLeod.
Thank you, Mr. Chair. The Member raises a good point because there is quite a decrease in the funding that we have been receiving from Ottawa, but we’ve taken the necessary steps. Obviously, because of the lack of funding, we’ve had to cut back on the dollar amounts. So on the number of programs we offer... We’re doing an evaluation of all our housing programs right now, housing choices programs. So until we see that, it’s going to be awfully difficult to determine which programs we may have to cut because of the loss of revenue. Our preference is not to cut any, because the ones we have we feel are serving a lot of the folks across the Northwest Territories.
So having said that, though, we do need to go back and have a look and do an evaluation of the programs that we do offer. I mean, I do know because we had such an aggressive construction plan for the last four or five years with the federal investment, that right now we’re having to deal with some of the after effects of that and I did give a Minister’s statement and an update to committee as to what we’re doing with all the vacant units we have and we’ve cut back on the number of HELP units that we’re doing in ‘11-12 just because we’ve got so many units that are out there. Then adding into our public housing stock as we’re doing now, then that may relieve some of the pressure of having to come forward with money for more public housing. So with the 37 we’re proposing through the Vacant Unit Housing Strategy and the 12, so we’ve got 49 units that should be into our public housing stock this year. So that should alleviate a lot of the pressure going forward. Thank you.
Again, I think that we have to be realistic here that we as government probably can’t cover off that $7 million. We are going to have to look for that internally. There are other things that have been requested in regard to shelter policies, looking at the possibility of other programs that people are requiring. I think also with the number of vacant housing units that we have on the ground, regardless if we’re trying to get them occupied, there’s still an ongoing cost to operate and maintain those units. You can’t walk away from that. I think that we have to be realistic that we have to sometimes make tough decisions and that that may mean doing away with a certain program or having, in some cases, to lay off program staff because you’re spending more money on delivering the program than they actually have program dollars to deliver it. So for me, that’s the issue.
We geared our programs and the amount of dollars that were allocated to each program. A lot of that was based on the money we were getting from the federal government and because that money is not there, then obviously we’ll have to pull back a bit and go back to our historical figures. We use the CARE, the home repair, for example. Because of the investment the federal government has made, we’ve been able to add resource into that particular program. Now that the investment is done, it’s sunsetted, then we go back to our historical figures and we feel that we’ve been able to make some gains in the last few years with the amount of money that we’ve been putting into a lot of these programs. Our programs were geared to the amount of money we received and now that all that’s sunsetted, we’re back to our historical levels. We still feel that we’ll be able to provide programs not on the scale that we’ve seen in the last few years but we’ll still be able to provide programs.
In the past one of the ideas was to start selling off some of the government housing units regardless if they were surplus housing or they were considered that come to in the life retrofits, it basically might be cheaper to just dispose of those units than trying to put any more money into them. I think we have to realize we have less money and we need to find ways to bring in new revenues or quit throwing good money after bad, knowing that we have to dispose of those assets, get rid of them, get them off our books, and take the O and M money or maintenance money and reinvest it into new construction or programs. I’d like to know where we’re going with that notion of divesting ourselves of old housing assets and getting them off our books.
Last count we have 51 units across the Northwest Territories that we’re looking to remove from our stock. We’re trying to find ways to get rid of these units. We’ve been working with some community governments to try and turn the units over because they’ve expressed an interest in them. We do have 51 that are slated for disposal one way or another and we’re hoping to have a fairly aggressive disposal plan. We hear from a lot of the communities, we have a lot of units in the community that are boarded up and aren’t really any good to anybody. We’re figuring out how we can deal with that. We’re looking to see some results to that.
As far as selling off some of our older units, that’s not a very good point, because everything’s for sale. Mostly everything’s for sale. What we want to make sure is if we’re selling our units, we want people to be able to maintain the units and look after them. We don’t want to be setting anybody up that takes over a unit and finds that their maintenance costs are a lot higher than expected. It’s not a policy, but we do say that most of our units are for sale as long as we have people there that are qualified to buy them. Not only buy them, but more importantly they have to be able to maintain them.
Can we have some order in the House? It’s kind of hard to hear the Minister’s good answers.
Okay. No question. Mr. Krutko.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I just thought you were going to...
---Interjection
Again the question I have is we’ve had a report not that long ago where there were 137 units sitting vacant. I think that we have to realize there is a cost to operate and maintain those units. We have to realize that that is an ongoing cost that we’ll have to pay, whether people are in those units or not. We have to find a way to invest the resources we have while realizing we may have to shut down certain units and say, sorry, we cannot operate uneconomic units because it’s just not viable. I know people don’t like to see boarded-up units, but at the end of the day you have to make a decision on how to find ways to get these units occupied, operational, and either disposing of them through the homeownership programs or finding ways, like you say, to turn them into social or public housing. We need to require them to take the cost savings from the operation of those newer units that we just built throughout the Northwest Territories. We have 2,400 units to operate. That may mean re-profiling those units and disposing or liquidating the older units. That is something that we have to be aware of. It is an issue. I know you’re trying different things regarding professional housing and getting more people into homeownership, but we have to find a way to work around that.
Thank you, Mr. Krutko. Mr. McLeod.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman. The 135 to 137 units that the Member spoke of, we’re looking at August 31st by having all those off our hands. A lot of them will be approved HELP clients, which wouldn’t be really a burden on the NWT Housing Corporation.
The Member is right; a lot of these units have been empty for the last few years. We’ve had to maintain the units and look after the operational costs of the units, because we’ve been putting them down so quick and we’re having trouble finding approved clients for it. We’re quite confident this year that we have 82 clients, we think, are just in the stages of being approved. We think we can get those in. I’m not sure if the 20 that we’re looking at under the gap analysis that I’ve asked the Housing Corporation to do, I’m not sure if they’re in the 82 or if… They’re in 82? So they are within the 82. So we’re thinking 82 will be given to homeowners or signed over to homeowners. Then, as I pointed out, we do plan on converting some over to public housing. Then, doing that, we may have to, as the Member said, start selling off some of our older units that we continue to pay the O and M on. We just take them down, sell them, do what we can with them, but we do need to relieve ourselves of a lot of these older units.
Thank you, Mr. McLeod. We’re on page 5-53, NWT Housing Corporation, information item, programs and district operations, operations expenditure summary.
Agreed.
Page 5-54, NWT Housing Corporation, information item, programs and district operations, grants and contributions.
Agreed.
Page 5-57. Mr. Bromley.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I want to bring this up. I know the Minister is aware of this. Some of the concerns that I have about the current budgeting of local housing organizations seem to fail to recognize the realities under which they provide social housing. This practice is leading to untenable financial situations and could ultimately mean the end of some LHOs and their bankruptcy. The reality and the dilemma that we face here is that you can’t get blood from a stone. What can the Minister do to prevent this service delivery failure, outright bankruptcy that seems inevitable if we stick to the current budgeting practices? I know the Minister’s been wrestling with this, so I’m looking forward to hearing what can be done. If there simply is not the capacity amongst our tenants to pay the rent collections that the Housing Corporation deems should be paid, then we need to be able to fund LHOs recognizing that fact.
Thank you, Mr. Bromley. Mr. McLeod.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman. We are working with some of the LHOs that have found themselves facing some financial difficulties. We have a stabilization fund we’re hoping will help them stabilize a bit.
The Member speaks of the rent collection. We ask LHOs to collect 90 percent of the assessments. We’ve had a lot of people across the Northwest Territories...and the Member talks about the capacity of tenants to pay. A lot of them have realized now that they have to start working on their arrears, they have to start paying their rent. I think we’re starting to see a bit of a shift in attitude. I do know and I see the numbers of people that are coming in that are in arrears that are working out repayment plans. It’s very encouraging to see that. Having said that, we still recognize that there is a need to continue to work with the LHOs, and the tenants need to do their part to ensure that their LHOs are running smoothly, are fairly stable.
During the transfer of assessments we found that we had a few LHOs running into some financial difficulties and we’re dealing with that right now. I think since June 1st, when LHOs took over the responsibility for assessments, I think we’ve seen an improvement. In all areas of housing we’ve seen improvements. In the repayment plans we’ve seen improvements. In the rent collection we’ve seen improvements. In the assessments and reassessments we’ve seen improvements. I think that goes a long way to helping the LHOs. In the short term we’re working with the LHOs. We have a bit of a stabilization fund that we’re hoping to help them offset and maybe get back on track. The rest of it will then kick in and I think we’ll see that once they’re over this crisis, they’ll all start operating pretty smoothly.
I’m afraid I swallowed that reassurance line for a couple of years on this and I wish I could be with the Minister on this, but it ain’t happening out there. I’m not saying that there aren’t some improvements in some areas, and perhaps in some communities there have been vast improvements. The situation is not like that with the communities that I work with and others that I know about. We’re not just talking a minor adjustment or a little adjustment here. I’m not sure what stabilization funds. I’d like to know how much we’re talking about in stabilization funds. We’re talking about 100 percent difference between what is being collected and what the Minister is asking to be collected. Like they say, you can’t get blood from a stone. I’m looking for some real action here, a reality check of the department, because the march continues very much towards bankruptcy here. That’s just the plain facts. The rates are an escalating thing, an exponential thing. It starts low and doubles each year. It doesn’t take many doublings before we’re at 100 percent in the hole here. I’d like to be reassured. The Minister speaks in a very reassuring way. Again, I haven’t seen any mechanism here that is actually going to deal with this.
I’ve only been reassuring the Member for about a year and a half, and in that year and half we’ve seen a significant improvement. I have a lot of confidence in our LHOs and our corporation’s ability to deal with the deficit. I know the Member thinks I’m just trying to paint everything with rose coloured glasses, but I do have a lot of confidence in our LHOs. We are doing what we can to work with the LHOs. There are some costs that are borne by the LHOs that are uncontrollables that are usually reimbursed by the Housing Corporation, and there are some that are uncontrollable. It’s a work in progress. Short of cutting a cheque for the amount that this particular one is in deficit for, we need to work with them. If we continue to keep bailing them out with the tenants realizing that they don’t have to pay their rent because they’re going to bail them out anyway, we’re sending the wrong message. I’m not prepared to do that. We will work with the LHOs. We will expect them to have the tenants come in and get assessed. For those that are assessed and are receiving the subsidy from ECE, well, that helps the LHO and that helps us. If they don’t come in and get assessed, they’re automatically dinged for economic rent, which in turn puts them in arrears. It’s hard for us because we’re unable to collect from income support to subsidize the rent. It’s a scenario that works both ways.
I continue to be confident in the LHOs’ ability and our ability to deal with the deficit and I have to be, because if we just start bailing everybody out, then I think we send the wrong message to tenants that regardless if they pay rent or not, the LHO will keep running. We’re not asking... As the Member says that it’s hard to get blood from a stone, but there are a lot of folks out there that have stepped up to the plate and I can run off numbers of people that have come forward, entered into repayment plans, and that in turn helps the LHOs.
Again, I’m hearing the Minister’s reassurance here and I guess I’d just ask him to maybe keep me apprised of any specifics where gains are made in my communities. I’ll leave it at that. Thank you.
