My motion today is flexible transition period to rent adjustments.
WHEREAS adequate and affordable housing is the most important concern of many Northerners;
AND WHEREAS one of our collective goals is to develop homeownership and financial management skills of tenants without resorting to evictions and other drastic collections actions;
AND WHEREAS housing subsidy programs should be structured so that employment opportunities, even short-term opportunities, remain an attractive option for tenants;
AND WHEREAS the program guidelines currently require immediate increase in rent for tenants who earn increased income;
AND WHEREAS it is completely unrealistic to expect tenants to pay these very high rent amounts without sufficient notice;
NOW THEREFORE I MOVE, seconded by the honourable Member for Great Slave, that the Legislative Assembly recommends that the NWT Housing Corporation change its program guidelines in order to provide responsive and meaningful flexibility;
AND FURTHER, that the proposed changes to the guidelines should allow for a transition period, such as a gradual increase of rent, for these tenants;
AND FURTHERMORE, that the Government of the Northwest Territories shall provide a comprehensive response to this motion within 120 days.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
Thank you, Mr. Jacobson. The motion is on the floor. The motion is in order. To the motion. The honourable Member for Nunakput, Mr. Jacobson.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Today the motion that we’re bringing forward for the transition period, the cost of living in the small communities is so high that people are having to make choices again for either buying food for their family or paying bills. And there are such high power rates in the communities, it’s unrealistic to try to pay everything at once.
People have to work. We have to get the people employment and not penalize them. The low employment rates, again, we have to help the people in our communities, not only in our communities but in the Territory. They want to work and not be penalized from the government and the Housing Corporation. Stabilization of a family, like my colleague Mr. Bromley said earlier today, stabilization of a family is key and everybody’s home is their castle. Only in Yellowknife it’s castles. In the communities...(inaudible)...Mr. Speaker. Parents go to work and that means kids are going to school. Higher revenues for LHOs move monies in for maintenance on units in the smaller communities and less tenant damage...(inaudible)... I’d like to hear what my other colleagues have to say. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
Thank you, Mr. Jacobson. To the motion. The honourable Member for Great Slave, Mr. Abernethy.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. This motion follows with my Member’s statement and questions I asked earlier today.
Mr. Speaker, the mission of the NWT Housing Corporation is to provide access to adequate, suitable and affordable housing. Through this mission, the intent is that through the provision of housing programs and services, the corporation contributes to the health and education of our people and to the development of sustainable, vibrant and safe communities. This is a great intent and a great mission. The problem is with very rigid programs and very rigid policies, I’m not sure that we can actually meet the intent of what the Housing Corporation is trying to accomplish.
They’re doing a lot of great work. There are people buying homes through the programs that we offer. There are people in public housing through the programs we offer, but we’re having difficulties transitioning some of these people out and as a result of some of the rigid programming that we have, people are making choices that may not be in the best interests of their long-term goals, which is to get out of public housing. The example I gave earlier today where an individual was offered an opportunity to work for a three-week period but declined it because that money they would earn in that three-week period would pretty much all be lost to the rent which would increase immediately, it seems kind of counterproductive to what it is we’re trying to accomplish.
There are other examples. Many of our programs only have one intake. I think there are opportunities for increasing the number of intakes in certain programs we have like PATH. It’s a good program. People are accessing it, but because we only have one intake, are we doing as much as we can?
That’s what we’re talking about: flexibility. Every situation is going to be unique. Every situation needs to be thought of on its individual basis. I’m not saying, and I don’t believe any of us are saying, that people shouldn’t pay rent. If they’ve got money to pay rent, they should. But as they go from employment to non-employment back to employment, we need to create a system that will allow them to use some of that money to get rid of some of their arrears, and get rid of some of their debts, and maybe buy some extra clothes for their kids. But because our program is rigid and it snaps into effect immediately, anytime they get a little ahead, we pull back. We need to create some flexibility.
Now, I know this isn’t easy, Mr. Speaker. I know there are challenges. I know there’s a big challenge. For instance, if we’ve got individuals who are entering the world of full-time employment, how long do we want to keep giving them increased subsidies? I mean, they’re now working, they’re contributing. They may be able to pay rent, but how long do we want to keep them on? I’ve had conversations with a lot of my colleagues and there have been a lot of suggestions thrown around: maybe a tiered approach. Maybe as people take full-time employment, we work with them to find out what their earning capacity is going to be over a period of time and we ratchet it up over a period of time, allowing them to increase how much they pay every month to the point where they’re paying the full allocation. The other thing that we could consider is as people start working full time, we could ratchet them into a homeownership program rather than just keeping them on rent. There are lots of things we can do and every one of them needs an open mind and every one of them needs us to think outside the box.
I worry that in government sometimes what happens is because rules have been broken, the next thing we do when a rule has been broken is we rewrite the policy and make it a little bit stricter. Then the next time we rewrite the policy and we make it a little bit stricter, to the point where nobody has to think. Just plug in a situation into the computer and the computer says now we do this. There’s no flexibility, no common sense, no humanity. Let’s have some humanity. Let’s have some common sense. Let’s have some flexibility. Let’s look at individuals and their situations on an individual basis. Let’s have polices that allow us to do that. That’s all we’re asking by way of this motion. Mr. Speaker. Thank you.
Thank you, Mr. Abernethy. To the motion. The honourable Member for Hay River South, Mrs. Groenewegen.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I’ll speak in favour of this motion as well.
Again, this suggestion is something that may result in reduced revenues for the housing authorities through the rents that they collect; however, Mr. Speaker, I think that there is a lot of merit to this transitioning idea. I mean, some people could say, well, if you have a three-month transition period, then people will work for three months and then they’ll quit their job. I mean, we can take this to any extreme you want. You know, the fact of the matter is that if people get a good job or a reasonable job that they like, they’re not going to quit it in three months so that their rent will go down. I mean, I would hate to think that they would have to do that.
Mr. Speaker, in the real rental world, not the Housing Corporation’s version of things, if you want to increase someone’s rent, for whatever reason, you have to give them 90 days notice. Why is that? That is because if their rent is going to go up, it gives them that 90 days to rearrange their financial budgeting and affairs. It may give them a chance to consider if they want to continue to live there. They may decide to shop around for some other place to live. There’s a purpose why, in the private market, you can’t increase people’s rent without giving them that 90 days transition. The reason why we get around that in the Housing Corporation and the housing authorities is because we say that the rent does stay the same, it’s the subsidy that changes. It’s the amount of subsidy that changes based on their income. That’s how we get around that. But I think there’s some good rationale to that whole 90-day thing. I don’t think we should be too quick to dismiss that idea.
The other thing, Mr. Speaker, that my colleague Mr. Abernethy mentioned is that if people do get into a situation where their incomes have gone up to the point that their housing, at the rent scale that we have, becomes unaffordable, they are perfect candidates for counselling for homeownership and we should have that flagged somehow. How do we flag them? Mr. Speaker, I believe that there should be a relationship between the housing authorities, as the landlords, and their tenants. They should know what’s going on in their lives. We have tenant relation officers. I think there should be counselling. There should be give and take of communication and information: if people’s families are downsizing because they’ve got kids leaving home; if they’re embarking on new employment opportunities; if they’re expecting children or they’re taking in foster children. Whatever. Whatever their circumstances are in their life. I think that in a really kind of humanitarian, humane kind of a way we could have tenant relations officers in our communities who know what’s going on with their housing clients and that they could counsel them in these situations.
I do think that the idea of the adjustment phase, the transition phase, it’s a very common theory. Like I said, in the private sector it’s a very common theory. It’s even a common theory in our work here as legislators. If we ran an election and didn’t get elected again, we have a 90-day transition. If you’re in Cabinet and you’re going to switch to a Regular Member’s housing allowance, you get 90 days. There is a cushion. There is a transition. It’s a common theory. It’s a common practice and I think it could apply very well in this instance, and I will be supporting the motion. Thank you.
Thank you, Mrs. Groenewegen. To the motion. The honourable Member for Nahendeh, Mr. Menicoche.
Thank you very much, Mr. Speaker. I rise today to support this motion. I will be voting in favour of it. It’s something that constituents have been raising with me for the past seven years, Mr. Speaker, because they always say every time I make extra money, I have to give it over to the housing the following month when I don’t have that extra money. So this is the type of thing we’re talking about. It’s not only for the seasonal workers, Mr. Speaker, it’s also for the ones with a steady job that for whatever reason run into bonus income from overtime, or even VTAs if they’re lucky enough to get it, but the following month their rent goes up.
I support the honourable Jane Groenewegen’s view that legally in the market world, there is a 90-day buffer. In fact, it raised enough interest in me that perhaps I’ll even ask our committee to seek a legal opinion on that matter, because no one should be forced to pay increased rents without due diligence and formidable notice, Mr. Speaker.
Getting back to the motion, it’s about fairness and it’s about people having bonus income, wanting to pay their other bills, Mr. Speaker, even their arrears in the system they’re in. Like, if they’re getting bonus income and we’re charging them higher rent the next month, how are they even going to have a chance to address the current arrears with their money being already spoken for, so to speak?
So I like the motion and really think that our government has to take this one seriously and I don’t think that we should see 12 months hence, Mr. Speaker, because what we’re talking about is actually an election year and I think that’s something that we should address soon and address in the beginning of the next fiscal year in 2011, early 2011, by April 1st. I think that’s how soon that we should act on it, and I believe that the Housing Corporation and all governments have got to really stand behind the firm commitment about standing behind their people and wanting to give them affordable and accessible housing, Mr. Speaker.
With that, once again, I’ll be supporting the motion and I thank you very much. Mahsi cho.
Thank you, Mr. Menicoche. To the motion. The honourable Member for Frame Lake, Ms. Bisaro.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I also will be voting in favour of this motion and I have heard Members mention this idea many times in committee and the House, or in any number of meetings. I feel, like the maximum rental rate policy, this particular policy is also debilitating and it also is a policy which does not enable our residents. We want our residents to be confident, we want them to lead productive lives. We want them to contribute to our communities, but this policy doesn’t help them do that. Our residents can’t do that if the effect of housing guidelines such as this one is to keep our people unemployed or crush them with rent shock or debt if they do get a job.
This motion speaks to the need for flexibility. I agree, housing policies seem to be rigidly implemented, and that was referenced by another one of my colleagues. There’s no opportunity for discretion at a local level, in my view. There’s no opportunity to apply common sense. One of the things that could be done is to average income over a period of time, over a year perhaps, over six months, but that certainly would take away from somebody getting a job for three months, their rent goes way up and then they lose their job and the back and forth and the seesawing that occurs right now. So I would hope that the Housing Corp would consider that.
There may be some loss of revenue by changing this policy, but I think over the long term if you take a longer view than just a couple of months, people will stay employed. Employed people pay higher rents than people who are unemployed and I think in the long term we will find that we probably increase our revenues from rent.
I urge the Housing Corporation to seriously consider this recommendation and I look forward to seeing the amended guidelines in the upcoming Shelter Policy. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
Thank you, Ms. Bisaro. To the motion. The honourable Member for Tu Nedhe, Mr. Beaulieu.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I, too, will be supporting the motion.
I think that this is, again, the ordinary Members going in the right direction. This has been an issue. I never really thought in depth about this three-month notice thing in the private market and the reason for that, and the explanation that Mrs. Groenewegen gave us makes a lot of sense, that even if the Housing Corporation has covered the policy by putting in the maximum rent and then changing only the subsidy portion of it, is essentially a way of getting around a policy that may be very important to the renters.
So I think that this time period, the transition period that is requested in this motion, is a tremendous opportunity for the Housing Corporation and the local housing organizations to do some counselling with the tenant if they’re going to continue to be renters, then the counsel will be done by the LHO and they’d be going in that direction and preparing the renter to remain as a renter, but have an opportunity to make some adjustments in their finances as a result of newfound employment. On the other side, if the Housing Corporation essentially sees this as a good long-term opportunity in employment for the tenant in public housing, that the Housing Corporation immediately pulls the file and starts working on homeownership counselling. I think if those aspects of the job that the Housing Corporation and LHOs were to work on, then I think this motion will go a long ways to assisting the tenants in public housing. Thank you.
Thank you, Mr. Beaulieu. To the motion. The honourable Member for Mackenzie Delta, Mr. Krutko.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I, too, will be supporting the motion.
Mr. Speaker, this policy is not new to the Housing Corporation. There was a previous transitional policy in place, especially for individuals who found themselves unemployed for some time and to make the transition from unemployment to employment, and more importantly, meaningful employment.
Mr. Speaker, I think it’s important to realize that through a gradual increase process, regardless if it’s 15 percent a month going forward until you finally work your way up to maximum rents, I think we also have to be cognizant of the seasonal economies we have in the Northwest Territories. Looking at the incomes that we do have, and like I stated, Mr. Speaker, from the statistics that we receive from our statistics department, in some of our communities, the communities I represent, in Aklavik there’s 45 percent of the households under the income of $30,000. I think realizing the incomes that people derive and you start mixing that with the actual costs associated with maximum rents, in those communities once you get a job and you start paying the maximum rents, you’re paying in excess of, I’ll use Aklavik again, $2,600 maximum rent in that community for a five-bedroom unit. That doesn’t leave you with much when your total income is $30,000 a year. I think we have to be realistic about that.
Mr. Speaker, again, I will be supporting the motion. This policy already existed at the Housing Corporation and all they have to do is reinstate it, make some amendments to it. So, again, we’re not starting from scratch, this policy already existed in the Housing Corporation. Thank you.
Thank you, Mr. Krutko. To the motion. The honourable Member for Yellowknife Centre, Mr. Hawkins.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. A flexible transition period really makes sense and I’ll tell you why. It’s my experience very few people would rather choose the option of not working, staying at home and waiting for something better to come along than when the possibility of a job will inspire them to get out there and help put their life together and keep it in order.
Mr. Speaker, working creates independence, but our housing policy does not. Mr. Speaker, we want people on their feet and running; not running from the Housing Corporation, we want them running in support of their families and on their own.
Mr. Speaker, this creates motivation for people who want to work. Even short-term work is better than no work at all. Unfortunately, who are we fooling? The housing officers know the exact extent of this problem. They know that if their tenants go out and work that they’ll be slapped with huge increases within a few days and, as colleagues here have said, those increases come when there’s no money left because of that short-term work. So who are we fooling? We’re fooling ourselves by leaving the policy in its existing state. We’re encouraging people not to work, we’re encouraging people to stay home, we’re encouraging people to be dependent on the system. So, Mr. Speaker, what kind of government are we if we encourage people to not be themselves, not to find ways to better themselves, not to find ways to get out there and create independence for themselves as well as their families?
Mr. Speaker, a flexible transition period does everything we want them to do. We talk about creating independent people. That’s what this does. Mr. Speaker, it’s kind of like the old saying of going zero to 60. The rent policy says, well, you pay very little, if none; you work today, you go up a whole lot when you’re not prepared for it. The rent transition means we are going to stagger it. I am well aware and have seen it myself, that the government has developed models on sliding scales. This is something that could encourage people to say, wait a minute, we are just going to make a little bit, you know? We are going to charge just a little bit more this month because you are making more this month. I think people would be encouraged then. The more you make, the more we will be part of the solution to help you.
Mr. Speaker, it is encouraging that this motion comes forward, because this really again speaks to the need that we need to find ways to empower people. We know that people working are healthier people. We know that when people are working, their families are stronger. We know that if we create a system where they are dependent on the system, that they are much happier to be at home. That is not healthy for anybody.
So, Mr. Speaker, this motion creates independence and I think that is why we are here. I would like to see that go through. I certainly hope Cabinet could find its way to support this motion, but I know they’ll sit and watch it go by in their abstaining kind of way. Mr. Speaker, I just want to say how, in advance, I am going to be disappointed by this Cabinet because I know exactly how they will vote. And that said, I will support the motion and I look forward to seeing this motion pass with uniting this side of the House and we will show Cabinet how it really needs to be done. Thank you Mr. Speaker.
Thank you, Mr. Hawkins. To the motion. The honourable Member for Weledeh, Mr. Bromley.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I would like to thank my colleagues Mr. Jacobson and Mr. Abernethy for bringing this motion forward. I think the public housing tenants often have other debts, possibly to family members or their friends or retailers that have been supporting them in their time of need. This sort of thing helps to address this sort of situation. Flexibility and a graduated rent assessment application or a responsible policy that realistically deals with income that varies over time would be an important support for public housing tenants struggling to get by.
Many families are unique in the pattern of income they experience and this needs some recognition. Again, this motion will not provide the answer, but it is potentially an important step towards applying some common sense that could encourage people to work and actually result in a net benefit and a net increase in the revenue accruing to the Housing Corporation. This motion recognizes the complexity of the real world, Mr. Speaker, and that policy must be able to respond to that complexity. The motion strives to recognize and support that policy development and, as such, I will be voting in support. Mahsi.
Thank you Mr. Bromley. To the motion. I will go over to the mover of the motion for closing comments. Mr. Jacobson.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I would like to thank my colleagues for all their comments and support given to this motion. Mr. Speaker, if Cabinet adopts this motion, we together could make a real change for the people that we represent. Today I ask for a recorded vote. Thank you.
