Thank you, Mr. Speaker. My questions today are for the Minister of Housing and it continues to deal with the housing rental scale. It’s something that I have to continue to address, especially when I’m getting phone calls over the weekend and even just before coming into the House here. I’d like to ask the Minister, the recommendations that Members from this side of the House offered to the Minister and his department, as well as recommendations made from the Seniors’ Society to defer the implementation of this policy for seniors, as well as the motion that was made in the Elders Parliament, everybody’s saying defer and even take it out of the policy. The Minister’s statement said otherwise on Thursday. This new approach, at what length did the recommendations made from us, the Elders Parliament and the Seniors’ Society come into effect in developing this new approach that the Minister addressed last Thursday?
Thank you, Mr. Moses. The honourable Minister responsible for the NWT Housing Corporation, Mr. Robert McLeod.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. In my response to questions the other day, I did talk about the fact that there was some concern raised by Members and by the Seniors’ Society. We did take some of the recommendations. That’s why we decided that we’d implement it over a two-year period with the first being September 1st and the second being July 1st of next year. I did say the other day that this is something that needs to be done, and it’s a question of treating all people across the NWT equally like we all signed up to do in our Members Code of Conduct. That’s where we’re going with this. To pay $35 to be all in as far as paying rent goes, I think that’s showing a lot of respect in looking after our seniors, where you have seniors that are living in their own houses on fixed income paying up to $1,500 a month to support themselves. I think this delaying it over two years, obviously, we heard some of the concerns raised by this Assembly.
With this new approach over two years, and it’s for seniors that live without other adults in their home, the economy is bad, there’s less jobs in the communities, high cost of living, in reality we do have adults that are staying with elders. I want to ask the Minister if he has the numbers of the percentage of seniors that are going to be affected where they will have to pay. I’m assuming that because of what I just said, that there might be a high percentage, so they are still going to be paying, getting all our seniors to pay. Does he have a percentage of adults that do live with seniors in the communities?
We do have some percentage where adults are living with seniors. Obviously, if their household income is low, then most seniors would be paying minimum rent. I think on average we have about 90 percent of our seniors that are going to be paying minimum rent starting September 1st, so obviously it’s half of what we were initially going to charge, and then July 1st of next year we’ll go to full implementation. We do have some numbers; I don’t have them with me. I will provide them to committee. Ninety percent of our seniors would be paying minimum rent.
The reason I asked that last question is sometimes we have caregivers, as well, who are taking care of our seniors, and if they are an adult staying in the home, then it’s going to affect the income and the amount of expenditures these elders do have. Since the statement, I guess, or even since we’ve been bringing up this issue in the House, has the Minister or his department contacted, or tried to attempt to contact, the NWT Seniors’ Society to get further input or any regional local elder committees, for that matter, to get their input on this policy and how it’s going to affect them in their communities, especially the small communities? Thank you.
We’ve done our homework and we know how this is going to affect seniors in the communities. As I said the other day, it will affect them to the tune of $35 a month starting September 1st, and full implementation on July 1st. One of the reasons we had the $1,000 exemption for seniors was the fact that we recognize a lot of them are on a fixed income. We have to be very careful that when they have adults in the home, again, I think we were talking today and there was some mention made of elder abuse. This sometimes can lead to elder abuse, where you have adults in the housing that are working and taking advantage of the fact that the seniors are not paying any rent. Then they move out and the seniors are left with high arrears. That’s happened in the past, so we have to be very careful with that. We have to make it so that if there are adults in the house that are making an income, then the household income would have to be assessed and they would pay rent accordingly.
Thank you, Mr. McLeod. Your final, short supplementary, Mr. Moses.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. In regard to deferring this, I know there were recommendations to defer until further consultation. Some of us weren’t expecting the $35 to be implemented on September 1st, which will affect some of our seniors in the small communities. Would the Minister be willing to look at that approach again and have it at zero until proper consultation is made with a lot of our communities that will be affected with the high cost of living, especially up in the Beaufort-Delta region where the cost of living is extremely high? Thank you.
We have committed to zero until September 1st. On September 1st the $35, or half of what they would have initially been paying, will kick in.
In response to the Member’s question before, we have made contact with the NWT Senior’s Society. We have offered up a meeting. We got a response. Actually, it was this morning. They’re quite busy right now with summer coming on, so we’re going to try to make some time. But it is going to be zero until September 1st. September 1st until July 1st of next year they’ll be paying half. That will get them acclimatized to having to pay rent, because of not having to pay for the last 16 years. Then July 1st of next year, full implementation will kick in. Thank you.
Thank you, Mr. McLeod. The Member for Hay River South, Mrs. Groenewegen.
