Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, I have questions for the Minister responsible for the NWT Housing Corporation based on his Minister's statement today. I would like to ask the Minister why they are not developing housing plans for all 33 communities at once. Thank you.
Masi. Minister responsible for the Northwest Territories Housing Corporation.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. As I mentioned in my Minister's statement, the overall plan is to get a community housing plan in all of our 33 communities. Right now, we have six. We have three that we have actually signed agreements to participate in, and I mentioned those. They were Whati, Fort Liard, and Paulatuk. We are working with another three communities; Deline, Jean Marie, and K'atlodeeche First Nations.
As we have been getting these programs, we only have so much staff to get out and work on facilitating these community plans. They have been doing a great job getting into the communities. If the plans aren't put in place, we are giving information and updates and working with leadership.
In the meetings that I have had with leadership, there is a great interest in getting these plans up and running. If we can try to move them faster, we will try our best, but really, it's our resources and the work that we have been doing, as you have heard in other Minister's statements that I have had, with the co-investment fund and some of these National Housing Fund programs. We are trying to get those out the door, as well as working on just maintaining our housing stock throughout the Northwest Territories.
It's a new initiative, it's a great initiative, and we are going to try to get it out to as many communities as soon as we can, but really I think it comes down to resources and also making sure that leadership and community stakeholders are available to have these very detailed meetings moving forward. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
These community development plans or community housing plans are something that could be done from a desktop. We have needs surveys. We know the lay of the communities. We have been dealing with these communities ever since the Housing Corporation was formed in 1974. We know what is there. Why are we sending people into the communities? We have 19 or 20 communities that have LHOs. We could use them.
We need to get this thing started. If it is going to take six years or five years to get all 33 communities done, by the time that we are done the last ones, the first ones would be obsolete. We need to be able to do all of them quickly. These things can be done in hours, not months. They can be done in hours. I would like to know: with the process that this Minister is taking to go through community development, how long is it going to take to do all 33 communities?
I don't currently have a timeline for all 33 communities right now. As I mentioned in my Minister's statement, we do have to do a needs assessment. As I mentioned as well, one of the lessons learned through the Voices on Housing survey was the importance of local voices and local input in creating these housing plans. As I mentioned, it is going to require five steps; the pre-planning phase, the needs assessment, which is very important, as well as the housing plan, implementation, and monitoring. We want to have very good agreements in place with the communities as we move forward, the agreements to participate in this, and that is going to require local input and local leadership as well as stakeholders in the communities to tell us what is best for them moving forward.
The NWT Housing Corporation probably has the best perspective of what is on the ground in all of the communities, comparing one community to another in order to allocate resources. Why are we waiting to have somebody agree, signing agreements, in order to do community housing plans? Planning is our responsibility. We need to do the planning. In order to do it, we don't have to just plan. We need to implement the work on the ground.
We have been talking about this for a long time. I started talking about community development plans in 2007. I asked questions in 2007 and asked this government to develop community development housing plans. Today we are now pre-planning to plan community housing plans. I would like to ask the Minister if he could look at the mandates that will be affected by improving housing situations, and I would like to ask the Minister if the mandate priorities played into the community development plans.
As I mentioned, we are going to be getting information from our local leadership and our local membership on what their priorities are in their community. That way, it can help us better identify where we are going to put our investments as a government, and the investments that we got from the federal government, how we are going to be spending those dollars to meet the needs of each of the communities as we roll out these community housing plans. That is going to take input from our local leadership, our local membership, our stakeholders, and working with our partners to address the housing needs across the Northwest Territories. With anything that we do, as I mentioned, with the needs assessment and the preplanning phase as we implement these housing plans, of course, we are going to look at addressing how it is going to impact our mandate on our core needs as well as our most vulnerable people in the Northwest Territories. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
Masi. Oral questions. Member for Tu Nedhe-Wiilideh.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, I can tell the Minster what we need in the communities I represent. I can tell the Minster that we need to address the home ownership of the seniors so that the seniors can remain in their homes so the seniors can age in place. That is the number one priority. That is the priority where people come to me almost every day. There are seniors coming to me almost every day saying, "I need my house repaired. I need my furnace done. I need this. I need that." That is where that comes from.
As far as the social housing portfolio goes, Mr. Speaker, the public housing or social housing portfolio that the community -- LHOs are doing a fantastic job. People are in their homes. If there are any maintenance issues, they go in and they repair it. Where the big gap lies is repairing home ownership units that were built several years ago for the seniors, several years ago for families. I think it is that simple. I would like the Minister to just focus in on one thing. I would like to ask the Minister if he would look at the core needs as they were presented on the 2014 needs survey and follow that so that he can begin to put work on the ground, as opposed to more planning. Thank you.
I have made statements in the House on all the programs, the initiatives that we are doing through the NWT Housing Corporation, and I appreciate the Member making some good comments with our LHOs, our district offices, as well, trying to get out to the communities to address the needs and the maintenance and the operations, which is always a big issue. We are trying to address those, as well. Even, we are working with people who are in the home ownership.
The Member had mentioned senior housing. We do have a senior housing planning study that we are going to be using to look at where we need to put our investments, as well. You know, we are doing the best that we can with the resources that we have in our district offices. I encourage our leadership to have those discussions.
I have said in this House we are going to be looking at doing a northern housing summit here in the NWT. Initially, it was going to be an Indigenous housing summit, but we figured, you know, why not invite our other jurisdictions, such as the Yukon, Nunavut, and bring Yellowknife and regional centres up to Inuvik to have those discussions and look at what some of our partners are doing, such as the Inuvialuit Regional Corporation. The work is under way. We have a lot of good initiatives going on, and we will continue to inform Members and the public on what those programs are. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
Masi. Oral questions. Member for Yellowknife North.
