Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Buying and owning a home is the largest decision a person can make in their lives, and towards that goal a person has to really understand just the personal financial management of ensuring that they understand the value of money. So my questions are for the Minister responsible for the Housing Corporation.
Can the Minister describe any programs that are in place to teach residents about financial literacy and the whole homeowner obstacle course? Mahsi.
Thank you, Mr. Nadli. Minister of Housing, Mr. McLeod.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I don’t believe it’s a homeownership obstacle course. There may be a time when it was, but I think we’ve streamlined the programs where it makes it fairly easy to navigate through.
There is a course, once somebody puts an application in, Solutions to Educate People. We call it the STEP course. During that course they would have some courses or some information on finances and how to budget and things like that. So, we try and assist them through the systems so they know exactly what they’re getting into and what’s required of them once they become homeowners. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
I’d like to thank the Minister for his reply. There is a forgivable loan option under the PATH program.
Can the Minister describe what measures are taken to inform NWT residents about this option? Mahsi.
We make every effort to inform the public of some of the programs we offer. The forgivable part of it is just one component of the course, or one component of some of the services that we offer. So, we have it on our website, and once people put an application in and if they find out they qualify for X amount and that’s forgivable, then we explain to them how the forgivable portion of it works. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
The Housing Corporation has a number of homeownership programs geared to low-and modest-income residents.
Can the Minister describe what type of monitoring and evaluation are being done to find out what’s working, what’s not working, and why? Mahsi.
It’s an ongoing evaluation, and one of the ways we find out if it’s working or not working is the number of houses that have been quitclaimed back to the NWT Housing Corporation. We put people into units, thinking that they have the ability to maintain these units. In some cases, many of them succeed, but for the ones who don’t, they quitclaim their units. They go back to the NWT Housing Corporation, and they realize they may be better suited as public housing clients.
We also have the HELP program, a two-year program that transitions them into homeownership. They’re responsible for all the upkeep of the unit for two years, and they make a determination after that whether homeownership is for them or not, then they go on to the next phase.
I could also point out that if they move on to the next phase, there’s also a bit of an incentive that we offer them to go from the HELP units into homeownership. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
Thank you, Mr. McLeod. Final, short supplementary, Mr. Nadli.
Can the Minister describe what’s being done in small communities to build up the stock of private market homes for sale? Mahsi.
We don’t put any more units in communities on speculation unless we know we have clients for them. One of the things the Member asked was what we had learned before. One of the things we did learn was, when we had the Affordable Housing Initiative, we put many units on the ground, assuming that we had people in the communities who would qualify for these units. Unfortunately, we didn’t get as much uptake as we thought. Many people didn’t qualify. We converted a lot of them over to public housing units, which was well received by most communities.
Our position now is we would like to make sure that we have clients who are qualified first, before we put the units in the community, because we’ve faced the issue in the past of too many vacant units in the community. I think we heard it from Members at the end of the 16th and the beginning of the 17th, so we’re taking steps to address that, Mr. Speaker. Thank you.
Thank you, Mr. McLeod. Member for Hay River North, Mr. Bouchard.
