Thank you very much, Mr. Speaker. I’d like to ask my question to the Minister responsible for the NWT Housing Corporation.
No way.
I spoke earlier about the eligibility and it’s a concern as I travel around to my communities within my riding. A lot of people are saying that they’ve applied, they’ve got their rejection letter saying that they’re not eligible. So it raises the concern to me, Mr. Speaker, just how many people are eligible for NWT Housing programs. We’ve got a community core need income threshold level. So I’d like to ask the Minister just what range of a client are we looking for. How much can they make? Well, he can pick one of the communities in my riding. How much can they make and what’s the lower limit they can make too, Mr. Speaker? Thank you.
Thank you, Mr. Menicoche. The honourable Minister responsible for the NWT Housing Corporation, Mr. Robert McLeod.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. It’s our intent to try and get as many people into homeownership as possible. That’s why I’ve asked the corporation to come up with a few different options as to how we can fit more people in the program. The core need income threshold is one of the arguments that we’ve heard quite a bit. It varies from the different communities as to the number of bedrooms in that particular community, the maximum construction costs. I have a list of all the core need income thresholds for all the communities across the Northwest Territories. I can commit to the Member that I can have copies printed off and distributed to the Regular Members. Thank you.
In some of our communities in the Northwest Territories we did get some new houses, but the number of affordability problems continues to increase and this trend raises questions about eligibility for housing programs. So just once again, perhaps if I ask a different question a different way, Mr. Speaker, if I can. The current intake was completed October 14th. Does the Minister have enough statistics to compare the number of clients that applied this year as compared to the last three years? Thank you.
The applications that we’ve received, as Members know, the deadline was October 15th. The applications that we’ve received for PATH, that’s the actual homeownership, we’ve got 110 assessments that we’re doing right now. As far as applications for the HELP units, we have 183 territorial-wide that we’re doing the assessments on right now. Thank you.
I was just trying to get a comparison to the intake for this year and how many people are actually eligible as opposed to the intake we took from last year or, say, the year before. Thank you.
The numbers that I gave were the applications that we received for the coming fiscal year, the ‘11-12 fiscal year. Those assessments are still underway. We’ve only had about a week and a half since the close of the applications. So as far as the actual numbers that were approved, we don’t have that number yet. Once the assessments are done, then we’ll have the number of applicants that have been approved. Thank you.
Thank you, Mr. McLeod. Your final supplementary, Mr. Menicoche.
Thank you very much, Mr. Speaker. In terms of the eligibility guidelines, should you have a community that doesn’t have enough applicants or else a lot of applicants are being rejected because of those guidelines, is the Minister willing to consider reassessing or relaxing his guidelines so that people in the upper limit, people that are over this net can be eligible for programming and some flexibility for the lower incomes as well? I believe that the people who can afford it should be in those units. Thank you.
I agree with the Member 100 percent, that people that can afford and are able to look after those units should be in there. That’s why I’ve given direction to the NWT Housing Corporation to have a look at the number of clients that may be over this net. If we started going too low, the lowest net, then I’m just afraid we may be setting some people up for failure and we may get some quick claim units because once they’re in there and realize what a cost it is to pay for your own fuel and power and other utilities, then they realize that there was a lot more to it than they thought. But I have asked the corporation to look at the number and I’m quite confident that we’ll get a few more people that we can get into a lot of these vacant units and into homeownership in the NWT. Thank you.
Thank you, Mr. McLeod. The honourable Member for Kam Lake, Mr. Ramsay.
