Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I would like to follow up on my Member’s statement with questions to the Minister of Housing. Specifically, I have questions for the Minister. The need for housing is acute throughout the Northwest Territories, as we heard, for all people on the ever-growing waiting list, but the need is even more acute for people with disabilities.
Can the Minister tell me how many clients on the housing waiting list in Yellowknife and the NWT are people with disabilities? Mahsi.
Thank you, Mr. Bromley. Minister of Housing, Mr. McLeod.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. We have 894 people on the housing waiting list across the Northwest Territories. I’m not sure if we have them broken down as to those with disabilities or not, but I will find out and I will share the information with the Member. Thank you.
Thanks to the Minister. I heard 894 people. I believe they would be families. People.
---Interjection
Okay. So, we don’t know how many families.
Another group of housing clients in desperate need than most are single parents. Not only are they suffering from lack of housing but their children, especially for the very young, are not getting a secure, healthy beginning in life that we desire for all of our children right from the start.
How many of the families on the current waiting list are parents with very young children? Mahsi.
As far as the ones who have young children, I’m not quite sure of that. I do have the numbers for the people who are waiting for one-bedroom, two-bedroom, three-bedroom and that would give you a fairly good indication of the number of people that are in the family. But we recognize that our largest growing segment in the population are those with young families, so we’re going to take the direction that we put up a lot more family one-, two-bedroom, multiplex-type units across the Northwest Territories and I think that will address that particular issue.
I’ll get the numbers for the waiting list on the number of bedrooms and share it with the Member. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
Obviously, 894 people for our population is very shameful. We have to do a better job. When people who lack safe, warm, secure housing see unoccupied Housing Corporation dwellings with no tenants in them being heated through consecutive winters, they are understandably frustrated and feel that this is a horrible waste and an unjust use of scarce public resources.
So, what changes in policy are being contemplated? I thought we’d done this already. This is going on for years. What policies are being contemplated or will we finally act to make sure that in the face of the desperate needs we see, available housing is not left aging and empty? This is just common sense, while real people with real needs are left unserved. It’s mindboggling. Mr. Minister, will you fix this?
We’ve taken a number of steps in the last little while to try and address some of the issues that the Member speaks of. We’ve had a number of vacant units in the communities. Through an Affordable Housing Initiative, we built a lot of these units on spec, assuming we were going to have the clients for them. Unfortunately, we overestimated the clients who might be eligible, so we turned a lot of those units into public housing units to try and address the public housing shortage.
The units that the Member speaks of, we’re just in the process now of... Those again were built trying to transition people from public housing into homeownership. Again, we overestimated the number of clients that we might have. So, we are in the process of converting those particular units into public housing because the need now is for more public housing. I think we’ve pretty well tapped out a lot of our homeownership clients, so we’re going to convert those into public housing like we did in a number of other communities. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
Thank you, Mr. McLeod. Final, short supplementary, Mr. Bromley.
Thanks, Mr. Speaker, and thanks to the Minister. We’ve made a lot of progress in the last five years in small communities, but it’s been at the cost of people in Yellowknife and especially people who have moved here from other communities. This is totally unacceptable. The Minister is continuing to focus away from Yellowknife and it’s getting ridiculous.
Reallocating existing housing stocks between programs and changing rules regarding eligibility does not alter the basic fact that there are not enough homes in the territory for the people who live here.
How many new housing units does the corporation plan this year, and how many of those homes will actually be assigned tenancy to the most vulnerable citizens of the Northwest Territories, the homeless? I’d appreciate that information for both the Northwest Territories and for Yellowknife. Mahsi.
We apparently budgeted $45 million to put into housing programs for this year. I think we’ve got about 45 new or replacement public housing units, and I will confirm that number and share it with the Members. Plus, I’ll also share the allocation.
The Housing Corporation, as the Member said, I think has seen a change in the last five years. We’ve tried to address a number of housing issues. We’re taking over the funding from ECE. I think we’re going to be able to access probably 55 more units in the capital, plus a number of the other programs in the capital that we support through contributions, and then we’re working with the developer, I think through the ECE transfer that offered us a few options. So, we’ve taken another 19 units for the capital.
So, with the limited budget we have and the challenges we face, I think we’re continuing to try and address some of the need for homes and places to stay across the Northwest Territories, and I disagree with the point that we’re doing it at the expense of Yellowknife. I don’t think that’s true. I think we’re treating all regions across the Northwest Territories fairly, and if you look at the numbers in our budget, you will see that. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
Thank you, Mr. McLeod. Member for Range Lake, Mr. Dolynny.
