Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I was very pleased to hear the Minister responsible for the NWT Housing Corporation announce a freeze on the evictions for public housing tenants who have arrears. I wanted to ask the Minister when will this policy come into effect and what steps will the people who have arrears have to take to address them between now and April 2012.
I want to thank the Minister and this government for a good Christmas present for the people in the Northwest Territories.
Thank you, Mr. Yakeleya. The honourable Minister for Housing, Mr. McLeod.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. The moratorium actually will take effect right away.
As far as the Member’s question goes as to what steps do they have to take, we want to encourage public housing tenants to go to their LHOs, enter into repayment plans, not only enter into them, we would ask that they honour them, because, as I said in my Minister’s statement, come April 1st for those that haven’t entered into and honoured their repayment plans, evictions will happen.
I’ve received notice from Deline that there were a lot of people on the eviction list that have to go through that legal process. This government, through the Minister, has put a moratorium to not go through that legal process. I want to ask the Minister, given the time to educate the people on the arrears if the tenants are not quite there and given the amount of time that we have, and not honour their repayment plan or to look at what the Minister’s hoping to do, what are the consequences for those tenants not quite there to start working on their arrears?
The process that the LHOs are going to follow is all the processes that are in place right now will continue to move ahead. So if there are terminations or rental officer hearings, those processes will not stop. The actual evictions will not happen until April 1st. This gives people ample opportunity to try and get into repayment plans.
The Member asked about the consequences, obviously, and as much as we don’t want to do it, come April 1st evictions will happen, and then it’s going to be a shame that these people haven’t stepped up to the plate after having another opportunity on top of the many that they’ve already had before.
I take this announcement as a golden opportunity to educate people in public housing units with arrears, to look at the responsible side of paying your bills and look at some of the consequences of not paying them. Some of the tenants that we have are fairly young. They think that whatever you damage or break in these units, windows and that, that the government will be there automatically to fix these places. What about the people – I just want to confirm – who are not being responsible for their units, through partying or damages? Will they be part of the evictions as the Minister has stated?
The process won’t change at all for those who are being terminated or evicted with cause, damaging units and the likes of that. Those terminations and evictions will go ahead. The moratorium only applies to rental arrears and rental arrears only.
I believe the Minister is being very clear that this is a one-time event and that people really need to address their arrears. I’m hoping that the Minister has a good educational plan to help people become informed as to their arrears and how they can be able to start paying off their arrears. Can the Minister inform me in the House here what type of plans they have with the Shelter Policy review and the rent scale review?
The Member makes a very good point, that this is another opportunity to deal with the tenant arrears. Our TROs actually work very closely with the tenants to try and educate them on the responsibility that they have as clients. In many cases in the past we’ve had numerous opportunities where we’ve tried to contact tenants, in some cases up to 18 times, and tenants are given chance after chance after chance. We’re hoping that they don’t see this as another opportunity to put off what they should be taking care of.
I still believe that some people will step up to the plate and that’s our goal in all of this, because this is, as the Member said, a one-time opportunity. It will not happen again.
This is the beginning of a new Assembly, the beginning of a new government. We thought this would be a good leeway into the work of the Shelter Policy Review and the rent scale review. That work has for the most part been completed. We’re looking for an opportunity to meet with committee and share with them some of our findings and recommendations and options and try to have that implemented as soon as possible. This is a piece of work that has been going on for a while and it’s one that people across the Northwest Territories, I think, are going to embrace. It addresses a lot of the concerns that we’ve heard during the campaign and from Members of this House and Members of the previous Assembly. That work is pretty well complete. We’re just going to inform Members and then we’ll go public with it.
Thank you, Mr. McLeod. Final supplementary, Mr. Yakeleya.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. The Minister has talked about the arrears with our public housing tenants. A lot of our people in those units also are Aboriginal people with Aboriginal languages being their first form of communication. Can the Minister, through the Housing Corporation, talk about how to translate these kind of issues and do they have some form of plan to educate people in their own language? Other than having a non-Aboriginal person come to the community to talk about it, can we have some provisions there where people in the community could be looked at in that process to help educate the people on the arrears?
People are still stuck with the version of the history that rent is only going to cost $2 a month. As I said, the translators that translated this with the chief, and the federal government’s take on housing for the Aboriginal people. Can we look for that type of creativity with the Housing Corporation?
The LHOs in the communities are the ones that work directly with a lot of the clients, and for the most part a lot of the LHOs have someone in the office that’s from the community that’s able to speak the local language. If they don’t, I’m sure they would do what they can to ensure that clients coming in that don’t have a good understanding of English are able to hear some of the instructions in their language. We’ve always tried to make a commitment that we will work as closely as possible with some of the communities in providing Aboriginal translation services as we did with the NWT Housing Corporation. For the most part the LHOs are local people that know the folks in the community and they speak and understand the language. I can assure the Member that we’ll do our best to ensure that all people understand this process as it’s being laid out.
Thank you, Mr. McLeod. The honourable Member for Yellowknife Centre, Mr. Hawkins.
