Thank you, Minister. Are there further comments or questions on this page? Mr. O’Reilly.
Thanks, Mr. Chair. I guess I’m totally confused now about surveys and plans. Can the Minister tell me what sort of surveys she was just discussing with my colleague and how that relates to the fiveyear housing needs surveys that are conducted by the NWT Housing Corporation? Thanks, Mr. Chair.
Thank you, Mr. O’Reilly. Minister.
Thank you, Mr. Chair. Yes, the needs assessment that’s done, for example the 2014 needs assessment that was done last, is done every five years. That is used throughout, nationally, actually, and that defines the core need that people advocate within that, 30 per cent of your income going to housing, et cetera. That’s a national tool that we utilize to kind of determine where we are on par with the other regions. The survey that we’re seeking to send out is really about individual choices and individual needs. The biggest thing that stuck out for me is Aboriginal governments asking me for culturally appropriate housing. The 2014 needs assessment does not identify anything around culturally appropriate housing, and so I need to find out more information on that from the people from the communities so that we are providing appropriate housing within their communities, not based on a national survey but actually on what each community says they want to see. Thank you, Mr. Chair.
Thank you, Minister. Mr. O’Reilly.
Thank you, Mr. Chair, and thanks to the Minister for helping me to understand the difference between these two tools that the Housing Corp is going to be using. I’m still trying to understand how the current surveys that are going to be sent out, is there going to be questions around costs to bring housing stock up to or out of core need? Thanks, Mr. Chair.
Thank you Mr. O’Reilly. Minister
Thank you, Mr. Chair. We will not be asking in the survey what they think they would need to bring it up to core need. We will, however, be asking what their incomes are to assess whether they are in core need. Thank you, Mr. Chair.
Thank you, Minister. Mr. O’Reilly.
Thanks, Mr. Chair. The survey will ask questions about affordability in terms of income, I guess, of some communities. I am not quite sure what that level of detail, but how about the other two aspects of core need: suitability and adequacy? How are those aspects to be reflected in the survey that’s to be undertaken? Thanks, Mr. Chair.
Thank you, Mr. O’Reilly. Minister.
Thank you, Mr. Chair. Yes, so what we will be doing is providing them kind of a background that says based on the 2014 needs assessment within your community, this is what we identify as the needs, and then we will be asking the communities based on those and saying can you prioritize what your needs are within that, and are there other needs that we haven’t addressed. Thank you, Mr. Chair.
Thank you, Minister. Mr. O’Reilly.
Thanks, Mr. Chair. As I understand it then, in this work that’s going to be done as early as this summer, there will be questions around suitability, adequacy, and affordability. I’m just wondering, I fully understand the need to have communitybased housing plans, but if that information is not rolled up in some way at a territorial level, how can there be a plan, a budget to actually do the work to get our housing out of core need, and to roll that up does require some level of consistency in terms of soliciting information. I’m not suggesting that one size is going to fit all in terms of the plan, but if you don’t have a consistent way of asking questions and identifying the core need and costing it somehow, how do you roll it up at the territorial level to develop a proper budget or a plan? Thanks, Mr. Chair.
Thank you, Mr. O’Reilly. Minister.
Thank you, Mr. Chair. The surveys that will go out actually will be the exact same for each community. The questions will be the exact same. It will just be the answers that we’re looking at compiling and dividing that on communities. For example, if I asked Yellowknife and said what would be your priority for this year and they said… I’m just giving examples. If they said for our community, we want a seniors’ home, and I asked Whati on what their priority is and they said we want to have CARE Major expanded, then we would look at that within our needs assessment. We would be using both tools and saying okay, the needs assessment says that within Whati, their core needs for suitability is this percent, and they’ve identified that as their major goal, so within that fiscal year, we would be costing and putting that focus within that community on what they want. Whereas in Yellowknife, we would be costing and putting it on towards more of, say, the seniors’ home that I gave for example. Each community will get the same questions. The answers will be costed, and then we will define the priority, what we’re going to do in each community. Thank you, Mr. Chair.
Thank you, Minister. Mr. O’Reilly.
Thanks, Mr. Chair. I think I’m understanding this a little bit better, but the communities then themselves are not going to be asked about costs. The costs are going to be developed by the Housing Corp in terms of helping communities put together their plans and then rolling that up somehow? Thanks, Mr. Chair.
Thank you, Mr. O’Reilly. Minister.
Thank you, Mr. Chair. Yes, the costs of doing this work will actually be on the NWT Housing Corporation. Thank you, Mr. Chair.
Thank you, Minister. Mr. O’Reilly.
Thanks, Mr. Chair. that’s good to hear, because then there will be a consistent way of costing out the work, and the Housing Corp knows how to cost out housing projects, so they will be applying some sort of consistent methodology presumably, and that stuff can be rolled up. Then would we be in a position to make some predictions of how that will address core needs across the Northwest Territories? Thanks, Mr. Chair.
Thank you, Mr. O’Reilly. Minister.
Thank you, Mr. Chair. As stated before, we’re not throwing away one tool to recook another. They’re kind of two different tools. The core needs are actually addressed within the needs survey that are done nationally, so those would still be there. They will still be our priorities. However, we will be asking the communities what they want us to focus on. if, for example, if the federal government, say, gave us $300,000 to address CARE Major, then we would look at that $300,000 and say which communities out of the 33 communities have identified CARE Major as their priority, and then we would focus that money, so it would be individual. If we had federal money for seniors, then we would say which communities have identified seniors as their priority and that would be how we would distribute the money versus the current system. Instead of saying we get $500,000 for seniors and we got 33 communities so we will just try to give a split of that to every community, which, in my opinion, is not the most effective usage of our funding. Thank you, Mr. Chair.
Thank you, Minister. Mr. O’Reilly.
Thanks, Mr. Chair. Still just a little bit confused here how this information is going to be rolled up to develop a plan that addresses core needs, but also can be used to prepare plans, proposals that can be submitted to the federal government, given that they seem to have more money for housing. There’s some kind of disconnect there. I don’t understand how this work is going to help the Housing Corp develop plans that cost out core need and that can be then submitted to the federal government for funding. Thanks, Mr. Chair.
Thank you, Mr. O’Reilly. Minister.
Thank you, Mr. Chair. Again, really want to focus that the advocacy to the federal government is based on the core need assessment, the 2014 core needs assessment. The federal government does not need to know, in my opinion, what each community has prioritized. They need to know that core need within the whole NWT is substantial. Then as well, remembering that we have agreed to a partnership triterritorial that we are going to be advocating to the federal government, so it would be really disrespectful, in my opinion, once we have agreed to that partnership, that we would be looking individually and trying to promote our own. The three territories when we speak about housing have been speaking in general to the federal government and saying as the North, we have huge core need issues and we need more money. You cannot use the base formula based on population to address our needs.
In general, we’re not saying to the federal government that this is how many houses in each community. We’re saying we have higher costs of living. We have huge needs. We have lack of infrastructure. We have higher, bigger challenges than communities in the South, so therefore, we need to have baseplus funding. Thank you, Mr. Chair.
Thank you, Minister. Mr. O’Reilly’s time has expired, so we will move on to Mr. Testart.
Thank you, Mr. Chair. Can the Minister explain what culturally appropriate housing is? Thank you, Mr. Chair.
Thank you, Mr. Testart. Minister.
Thank you, Mr. Chair. I’m not going to say it’s a really good question, but it is a really good question because I didn’t have any idea either. The first time that an Aboriginal government came to me and said we want culturally appropriate housing in our community, I kind of thought in my head and I said well, I’m sure that doesn’t mean tents and igloos, because we’ve kind of passed that. I asked them what does culturally appropriate mean to you, and examples were given. For example, the IRC had said that within their community, culturally appropriate, they’re hunters, and within their community, they bring in meat, and I know that my father used to be a hunter as well. They bring in meat. They hang it in their house. They have blood dripping. We currently, we bring in tile, housing with tiles and laminate flooring. The blood is dripping. It might go through the cardboard if they have cardboard down, and it gets into the cracks, and it’s rotting within their flooring. For them, they want to have ideally laminate or linoleum flooring, and ideally, they’d like some kind of a drain within the room so that they can hang meat. Now, of course, in Yellowknife, we don’t have, my assumption is that we don’t have as many people in our public housing units that are hunters, so for Yellowknife, those kind of additions to housings would not be appropriate. I’m not going to go across and say within every community, now we’re going to put in linoleum floors and drain pipes, but within the higher north communities, if they address that and they say that’s what they need, then we’d be focusing our housing units within those communities based on what they say. Culturally appropriate means whatever the community feels is culturally appropriate to them. Thank you, Mr. Chair.
Thank you, Minister. Mr. Testart.
Thank you, Mr. Chair. Thank you to the Minister for clarifying that. I think that’s a very interesting example, and in the context of food security and traditional activities, that’s a very important piece of the puzzle that I wouldn’t have considered, so I appreciate the Minister sharing that with us. I think this is a way that our government can be a leader on this is if we make those kinds of decisions that listen to our people, and especially, it reinforces that nation-to-nation dialogue that’s going to be so important for Canada moving forward. I wish her all the best in this approach. I have nothing further to say. Thank you, Mr. Chair.
Thank you, Mr. Testart. I will let the Minister respond if she would like.
I just want to respond by saying thank you. Thank you, Mr. Chair.
Thank you, Minister. Next, we have Mr. Beaulieu.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Mr. Chairman, I feel like I have been talking about core need all day here, and then we’re getting into more questions around core need. I would like to know how the Housing Corporation sees affordability when the house is in perfect condition and adequately sized or suitably sized, affordability as a housing issue, as a coreneed housing issue. Thank you, Mr. Chair.
Thank you, Mr. Beaulieu. Minister.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. within the affordability, if a person has a suitable house and adequate house in that the roof doesn’t leak and they have the proper amount of bedrooms, affordability can still become an issue if they are making, for example, making $10.50 an hour, and there’s no other units within the community, so although they have enough bedrooms and the roof doesn’t leak, they are in a unit that they have no option to be in, but they can’t really financially afford to be in. Thank you, Mr. Chair.
Thank you, Minister. Mr. Beaulieu.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Mr. Chairman, it’s still my question. My question is what is a person living in a perfect house with enough bedrooms with no adequacy issues that doesn’t make enough money have to do with Housing Corporation? My understanding of core need is it’s pretty basic. It’s not that complex. You have to have an affordability issue, because if you’re making $250,000 or $300,000 a year, no matter what your house looks like, how small it is, you’re never going to be in core need. The same applies the other way. Unless you have a suitability or an adequacy issue, how on earth are you in core need for housing? Because you don’t make enough money? Then you go get a subsidy or you get some money. I recognize that the Housing Corporation would like to address people that have affordability issues, not core need issues, affordability issues in other rentals as an example. People that are renting in a private market. They can give subsidies to those guys and reduce the people that have an affordability issue across the Territory or in Yellowknife or wherever there’s other rental units, but we can’t do anything about their house. We can’t add a bedroom to somebody else’s house. We can’t start fixing somebody else’s apartment. The individuals in there have affordability issue? We address it. If the Housing Corporation wants to address that issue, that’s fine. Why call it core need for housing? It’s not a core need housing issue. I was amazed to see that CMHC has essentially the same description, but we must know that affordability can’t stand alone. We must know that by now, that affordability cannot stand alone. No one can convince me that somebody that’s not making enough money that lives in an adequate and suitable house has a housing core need issue. Thank you.
Thank you, Mr. Beaulieu. Minister Cochrane.
Thank you, Mr. Chair. Affordability is a core need. The Members just moved a motion that the Corporation is to try to work two percent per year to meet the national standards, which are set by CMHC, which address affordability as a core need. Within Yellowknife, the major issue is affordability, and it has a huge need of people that can’t afford. Nationally, the standard is if you’re paying more than 30 per cent of your income for your housing needs, you are in core need. At any point, you’re at risk of being homeless. If we ignore people that have a suitable house in that they have enough rooms, that their roof doesn’t leak, and we ignore that they aren’t making enough money to pay for the market rent that we’re charging in the communities, then we’re not addressing, in my opinion, the realities of people. Affordability is a core need, and for anyone that has made $10.50 an hour and trying to pay for rent within our community of Yellowknife knows that affordability is a core need. Thank you, Mr. Chair.
Thank you, Minister. Mr. Beaulieu.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Mr. Chairman, I’m not asking the government to ignore people that can’t afford their homes. There are subsidies that can be paid to individuals. My point is we have a budget that is there to address people that have adequacy, suitability issues. Somebody’s house is not adequate to live in, whether they’re lacking electricity, hot and cold running water, continuous heat, solid foundation, whatever, all adequacy issues, however, and/or it’s too small. They got more than two people using the national standards on individuals. I’m not going to go through that, but just sufficient to say they have more individuals in the home that either can share or single people in rooms than they have in this particular apartment. How does that become a housing issue? It’s an affordability issue, I agree, but in order to have a core need issue for housing, you have to have a suitability or adequacy issue. I could go on and on about the need survey and why we’re indicating that people, I mean, private rentals have an adequacy issue or private rentals had a suitability issue. If someone is renting a twobedroom apartment and chooses to have four people or five people live in there, that’s their business. Why would we all of a sudden identify that, mark that down as a core need issue and report it as such? It’s the same thing with apartments. If somebody is renting an apartment, spending more than 30 per cent of their income towards apartment, that’s not a housing issue. It’s an affordability issue. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Thank you, Mr. Beaulieu. Minister Cochrane.
Thank you, Mr. Chair. I’m going to have to beg to argue with the Member on that one. Affordability is defined within the national standards on core needs. Like I said, we’ve just passed a motion in the House that said we’re to work towards addressing the core need, national, and so I don’t know how I would work towards that if we changed the definition and our definition of core need does not match the national definition of core need, because then I cannot at any time address… I can’t compare apples to oranges. If you want me to do the motion and work towards addressing the core need then you need to use the definition of core need that is nationally accepted. Thank you, Mr. Chair.
Thank you, Minister. Mr. Beaulieu.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Mr. Chairman, I’ll say one more thing on this. I’m not asking the Minister to ignore core need first of all, I’m asking the Minister to make sure that if there’s an affordability issue if there is an affordability issue then it should be coupled with adequacy or suitability or both. That’s true core need. An individual that doesn’t make enough money that’s renting an apartment off Northern Properties is not necessarily in core need as a standard that the Housing Corporation has to go and address. Does the Housing Corporation even have a program to address core need, the affordability issues in the community? If they do, it’ll be just a cash thing. As, like I said, they can’t go to somebody else’s apartment block and start putting in plumbing or running water or adding roofs to someone’s private home, right? The question is, shouldn’t these all be together? At least affordability should be coupled with one of those other needs or both. Affordability should not stand alone, just as adequacy shouldn’t stand alone and neither should suitability. Because a person can have a suitability and adequacy issue but does not have an affordability issue that individual is not in core need.
