Thank you, Mr. Menicoche. Minister McLeod.
Thank you, Mr. Chair. That’s a direction that we’re going in the future. If you notice, a lot of communities there are a lot of detached, very large houses, and as we’re taking those out of stock we’re going to more of a multi-unit type of configuration. I think we have up to 68 percent of our units that we have now are multi-unit type of configuration. We find there are many benefits to that. We find that we’re needing smaller units now instead of the big five-bedroom Webers we used to have. So, that’s the direction the Housing Corporation is taking in the future and there’s a trickle-down effect because it helps with all utility costs and the cost to maintain the unit. Thank you, Mr. Chair.
I thank the Minister for that answer. With the project listing for the ’16-17 construction year, are any of those multiplex-type buildings planned for next year then?
All our planned replacement public housing units next year are going to be multi-type units. All our planned affordable housing units are going to be a duplex or a multiplex-type unit.
While I’ve got the microphone, I’d like to speak a little bit about future needs of Fort Simpson. Of course, due to the housing stock, there’s a need for a new eight-plex or a 10-plex type of building. I don’t know if the department has that in their forecast for future growth of Fort Simpson and their needs there.
Not at this point. As we plan as we go forward here, we’ll have to look at each community and their needs going forward. We did, I think, have a couple of duplexes or triplexes that were planned for Fort Simpson, but because of the situation there, we’re trying to find ways we can get that product on the ground. As far as immediate future, it’s not in the plan right now, but again, as we go forward and as the 18th Assembly goes forward then they’ll start identifying some of their needs in the communities.
Thank you, Mr. McLeod. Is the committee prepared to go to detail?
Agreed.
Committee, we’re going to defer page 67 until we have consideration of the activities. I’d like to next turn to pages 68, 69, 70, 71 and 72, finance and infrastructure services, infrastructure investments, $22.187 million. Ms. Bisaro.
Thank you, Mr. Chair. I want to make a general comment and reiterate the comments I made in my opening remarks to the budget itself. In general, we don’t have enough public housing units in the NWT in any of our communities. Particularly here in Yellowknife, we have a huge wait-list for public housing, we have a huge wait-list for assisted living housing and so on. I would encourage the Housing Corporation to seriously consider finding a way to increase the number of units of public housing that we have. I know that we are losing money through the CMHC declining funding, but we need, particularly in Yellowknife, a greater number of units, we need higher numbers of stock.
That’s just a comment. I do have two questions from page 72, the projects in Yellowknife. The first one is it states: “Non-residential building, 1 unit, major retrofit.” I’d like an explanation of why the Housing Corporation is renovating a non-residential building.
Thank you, Ms. Bisaro. Minister McLeod.
Thank you, Mr. Chair. I’ll respond to the first part of Ms. Bisaro’s concern and then I’ll have Mr. Anderson respond to the non-residential.
We hear the concern that we do need more public housing across the Northwest Territories, and again, we keep saying that we’re challenged by the CMHC declining funding, but I think there’s probably going to have to come a time where we can’t keep saying, well, we’re challenged by the CMHC declining funding. We have to think, or future government may have to make a decision as to whether we are just a public housing provider and use the money that we put into some of our repair programs to help offset the losses from CMHC. I think we’ve been very fortunate in the last couple of years that this Assembly has stepped up and filled in some of the gap of the money that we lost through the declining funding, but there’s going to have to be a decision, I think, made in the future sometime as to whether we are just solely a public housing provider or we continue with the programs we have and continue to be challenged financially.
I will have Mr. Anderson speak to the non-residential renovation.
Thank you, Mr. McLeod. We’ll turn it over to Mr. Anderson.
Thank you, Mr. Chair. We have a separate category in the way we categorize our housing assets or our building assets. Everybody is quite familiar with affordable and public housing. The non-residential buildings are related to facilities that we have where we lease out to other government departments or non-profit organizations to provide services and/or office space, as an example. In the case of this project, it relates to a shelter in Yellowknife that we lease the building and because that’s a building owned by the corporation, we are providing upgrades to that building to bring it up to good condition.
Thank you, Mr. Anderson. Ms. Bisaro.
Thanks, Mr. Chair, and thanks to the Minister and Mr. Anderson for the explanation. This identifies it as one unit. Generally, when I see one unit referenced in the Housing Corporation information I think of like a two-bedroom apartment or a house or something. In this building, which is this non-residential building, is it the whole building that’s being upgraded and what’s the size of the building?
Thank you, Ms. Bisaro. Minister McLeod.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman. It’s actually the Centre for Northern Families and it’s the whole building that’s going to be upgraded.
Good to hear that. I know that building definitely needs it. That helps me understand the expense.
The other question I have is the next item in the list and it’s public housing, or PH, public housing, housing replacement reserve. I don’t remember seeing that in other descriptions of expenditures. I wonder if I could get an explanation or is this a normal practice for us to have a reserve situation and what is this referencing in Yellowknife?
We’ll turn it over to Mr. Anderson.
Thank you, Mr. Chair. This project, we see when we’re doing large facilities that need either renovation or replacement, we don’t really have the resources to deal with it on an annual basis, so we thought it was appropriate to start setting aside money for the Mary Murphy seniors facility. It’s 46 years old at this point. It’s in pretty decent shape and we’d like to keep it going for many more years if at all possible. But we want to start building a base of resources so that we can deal with that when the time comes.
Thank you, Mr. Anderson. Ms. Bisaro.
Thanks, Mr. Chair, and thanks to Mr. Anderson and to the Minister and staff. I think that’s great. As long as government allows us to do reserves like that, I think it’s a far better way than doing a lump sum multimillion dollar payout at one time. That’s all I have.
Committee, we are on pages 68, 69, 70, 71 and 72, finance and infrastructure services, infrastructure investments, $22.187 million. Mr. Bromley.
Thank you, Mr. Chair. I’ve just been scanning this list repeatedly, looking for the words Ndilo and Detah and I’m not finding them. It’s not that I do not spend a good proportion of my constituency work on housing issues in my community. I wonder if I could get the Minister thinking on that and what the strategy is for the situation my people are facing.
Thank you, Mr. Bromley. Just for reference, Mr. Bromley, page 69, item 7, there is a unit there. But I’ll let the Minister follow up with that. Minister McLeod.
Thank you, Mr. Chair. We were positive that we had Detah and Ndilo on the list here, but as the Chair pointed out, it is on page 69. Let me put my glasses on...six units major retrofit. I almost gave them an extra one there. We recognize some of the challenges the Member faces there. You can recall we had a couple, I think we had a triplex there that was vacant. Folks are moving into that triplex, so we recognize the Member has had some issues in his riding and he has brought them forward to us. We are glad to see that we have some work and some units being major retrofitted in Detah and Ndilo. Thank you.
Thanks for the Minister’s comments with sharp eyes there. I actually had not found that one. I appreciate very much the retrofits that are done. I know the Minister is aware of the state of the housing in those communities. It’s very difficult to visit people in their homes, which are not necessarily public housing units; people are fierce about trying to keep their own homes going. Unfortunately, I have not been successful in helping them get support from the corporation to deal with some of those clearly traumatic conditions.
I know there was a triplex, there was also a couple of homeownership units that have sat empty, brand new, for a couple of years now. I don’t know that it is appropriate to ask what the strategy is for that. It seems appropriate, though, that if we are going to build this infrastructure, we want to be able to enable and find a way to get people into those units. Again, I appreciate the major retrofits on those units. I know the Minister is aware of the need there. I would appreciate comments on how we can figure out how to get people into those units. Thank you.
The Member has been very diligent in bringing concerns of his constituents forward. Unfortunately, some of the decisions that are made are ones that he wasn’t aware of or because of one reason or another, folks were declined for some of the programs.
We have done a number of things to try and get as many people qualified for programs as possible. I think we have one affordable housing unit left in Detah and our desire would have been to find a suitable client to put into that unit. Failing that, as we did in some of the other communities, we have actually turned it into a public housing unit.
The corporation is well aware of the challenge that we face out there. We just had a meeting out there recently and, again, it was pointed out about some of the vacant units and we are working the steps to try and address that. Hopefully, we are able to do that soon.
Ideally, we would like to have clients for all of our HELP units that we put on the ground, try to get people transitioned into homeownership. For one reason or another, we seem to be, not only in that community but we seem to in other communities, we have been challenged to get people who are qualified. We have changed some of our criteria to try to make them qualified, and for one reason or another we have managed to get a few in. The ones that we haven’t been able to use, we have turned them into public housing units. Thank you, Mr. Chair. I went on a little too long.
Thank you, Minister McLeod. Committee, again, we are on pages 68 to 72 on finance and infrastructure services, infrastructure investments, $22.187 million. Does committee agree?
Agreed.
Thank you. Mr. Hawkins.
Thank you, Mr. Chair. I am just wondering what the net positive impact will be in the Yellowknife community for public housing in this budget. Thank you.
Thank you, Mr. Hawkins. Minister McLeod.
Thank you, Mr. Chair. I’m sorry, Mr. Chair, I am going to have to ask the Member to repeat his question.
The impact, Minister, on Yellowknife housing with this budget.
Thank you, Mr. Chair. We have a few projects that are here in the capital. We are just trying to find the dollar value. If we can’t come up with it right away, I will commit to getting that dollar value to the Member. Thank you.
Thank you, Mr. McLeod. Mr. Hawkins.
Thank you, Mr. Chair. I certainly hope before the end of session. That said, can the Minister tell me what the net positive impact on new housing opportunities through public housing will be in the city of Yellowknife? Thank you.
Thank you, Mr. Hawkins. Minister McLeod.
Thank you, Mr. Chair. As I said before, one of the challenges we’re facing is we are doing a lot of replacing of public housing, not so much new public housing. We are doing a 19-unit apartment in Niven Lake. As far as future goes, we are doing mostly replacement units. We have, I think, through the ECE transfer program, we have taken over I believe 55 units. The program went through ECE before. They transferred the money to us and then we, in turn, leased a unit from I think it was a private landlord and we put income support clients in those units. We turned them into public housing, so there has been a bit of an increase there but it is, as I said before, a bit of a challenge and is one that we are working towards trying to find solutions for. Thank you.
Other than the Niven Lake… No, sorry. Niven Lake unit, that will put 19 new doors on the market in the Yellowknife area. There are no other new doors being added to this community?
I believe that’s what I said. We are challenged and we have the 19 doors now, the 55 we got through the Income Support Program, and other than that, that is where we are at right now. Thank you.
It is my understanding that Yellowknife suffers as the community with the largest need, so not necessarily percentage but certainly in the context of actual numbers.
Can the Minister confirm that? Can he also tell me how many people are waiting on the public housing list in Yellowknife? Thank you.
In answer to the first question, yes. Second question, we have a waiting list of 146 people on the public housing wait-list in Yellowknife. Again, I think some of these families have to be on the wait-list to access the Income Support Program, so they may already have a roof over their head but because they need to access the Income Support Program, they need to be on the local public housing wait-list. Thank you.
Under this particular circumstance – and now I am going to take a leap in a different direction – what seniors housing does the Department of Housing support in Yellowknife? Thank you.
Thank you, Mr. Hawkins. Mr. Anderson.
Thank you, Mr. Chair. In Yellowknife, of course, we have the Mary Murphy facility, we also support many other projects in Yellowknife, including the seniors in Northern United Place. Aven Ridge and Aven Manor are both income facilities. We also support on the mortgage interest rate subsidy side on Aven Manor. The other, I guess, point I would make, more as a general comment, 31 percent of our public housing units are let by seniors, so we have a significant number of folks in that program as well. Thank you.
Thank you, Mr. Anderson. Mr. Hawkins.
Thanks, Mr. Chair. Thank you for that and thank you for the recap on those places. Can the Minister tell me how many doors we support in each of those locations? So, Mary Murphy, NUP, Aven Ridge and Aven Manor. Thank you.
