Thank you very much, Mr. Speaker. I just want to follow up on my Member’s statement on the idea of transitional housing for our small and remote communities. I would like to ask the Minister responsible for the NWT Housing Corporation, firstly, to explain the purpose of the one-year residency requirement to access housing programs. Thank you.
Thank you, Mr. Menicoche. The honourable Minister responsible for the Northwest Territories Housing Corporation, Mr. McLeod.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I am not sure if the Member is referring to one year to access public housing programs or the home ownership program. I am pretty sure the Public Housing Program, the residency requirement is set by the LHOs. As far as the home ownership program, that is set by the NWT Housing Corporation. That is set so we could have long-term Northerners be first in line for accessing some of our programs. So if somebody moves here a month before one of the programs, they would have to wait for a year before accessing any of the home ownership programs. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
Mr. Speaker, I think a guideline like that certainly works well in a larger community where people are on a waiting list. It probably has happened in the past where people did get bumped by somebody new moving in. That really makes sense there, but for people returning to and coming to live in the smaller communities where housing is scarce or there is none, that same one-year residency requirement just doesn’t work, because there are no homes there. We are expecting them to perhaps couch surf for a year until they become eligible to come back.
Will the Housing Corporation look at this idea on providing transitional housing for people returning to small and remote communities? Thank you.
Mr. Speaker, one of the reasons Housing has been able to implement a lot of these new programs is because we listened to the rent scale review or the…(inaudible)…policy review to a lot of the suggestions that were made out there. This is one that I will commit to the Member that I will go and have discussions with the corporation, because the Member raises a good point about returning back to the community if you are a resident to that community.
Again, those communities with the LHOs are usually set by the LHO. If they have vacant units, I am sure they may look at special situations such as that. If they have vacant units, there’s no point keeping them vacant.
I will commit to the Member that in the case of his riding, we will have a look at the residency requirement. I think a couple of his communities don’t have LHOs, so those are set by the NWT Housing Corporation. I will commit to the Member that I will have a discussion with the Housing Corporation on this particular issue. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to hear that the Minister is being flexible about the small and remote communities where an idea such as transitional housing can work. That idea did come from the chief of the Jean Marie River First Nation.
At this time I’d like to invite the Minister to accompany us during our Nahendeh tour to the community of Jean Marie, and we can discuss this idea, and see if we can make it work, and if we can pick that community as a pilot project, so to speak. Thank you.
Thank you. One of the problems we face in some of the smaller communities is there are not as many transitional opportunities as there are in some of the larger centres, and I think we have to have a look at that. Again, I say if we have units in the communities that are vacant, public housing units, and we’re asking somebody to wait a year, we’d have to review that, and I think we’d have to review some of these on a case-by-case basis to see where we can best assist. There may be some other reasons why folks are not in these houses or in public housing. But I will commit to the Member – and I heard the same thing from the chief yesterday about his concerns with his community – that I would like to pay a visit to Jean Marie as part of our Nahendeh tour. Thank you.
Thank you, Mr. McLeod. The Member for Hay River North, Mr. Bouchard.
