Thank you, Mr. Speaker. My question is for the Minister of the NWT Housing Corporation. I want to ask you how many vacant units are in the Sahtu.
Thank you, Mr. Yakeleya. The honourable Minister responsible for the NWT Housing Corporation, Mr. Robert McLeod.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I’d have to find that information and pass it on to the Member.
I look forward to the reply from the Minister. I want to ask him, on the vacant units they have in the Sahtu, for example, I had a phone call from Colville Lake. There are a couple of vacant units up there. I also had a call from Chief Frank Andrew and there are a couple of vacant units in Tulita. I know there are a couple in Deline. I want to ask the Minister if his corporation has a plan on how to get people into those empty units. There are a lot of issues there, but how and what is the Minister doing to get people into those units?
I appreciate the Member telling me how many vacant units are in the Sahtu. We had a very aggressive vacant unit strategy a few years ago because of the investment that was made by the federal government. We had 135 units. We’re happy to say those are all full. We have a few new units that are going up. There may be a couple vacant in each community, but what we’re planning on doing is we’re hoping to get more and more people into those units as they qualify for some of our programs. We’ll move them in there. Compared to the situation of a couple of years ago, I think we’re down to very few vacant units now. We usually have them there for reasons to try and find suitable tenants to put in there.
When these phone calls came from the leadership in the Sahtu… I want to ask the Minister to provide me what it costs the Housing Corporation to keep them operating and functional and how long they’ve been vacant and how can we work together to hope to get my people into these housing units.
I’ll be happy to work with the Member in trying to do what we can about the vacant units. I know we are working with some potential clients not only in the Sahtu but across the Northwest Territories. We go a long ways in trying to get tenants into some of these houses, whether it’s a HELP unit or a supported lease unit or a home ownership unit. We try very hard to get them in there. Compared to the situation we had a few years ago, our vacant unit numbers are way down and these are usually there, so we can try to get some suitable tenants to put into these units.
Thank you, Mr. McLeod. Final, short supplementary, Mr. Yakeleya.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. We went to Colville Lake, Mr. Abernethy and I and Mr. Beaulieu, and we witnessed and saw the three empty units in Colville Lake. I know the Minister is working very hard to get clients in there. We certainly support that. It’s been a couple of years since we have had these empty units sitting there. We will work with the Minister to get these units occupied. There are a number of initiatives that we could look at to get the units occupied. I think it’s a crying shame that in Colville Lake there are units that have been sitting empty for so long. I’d like to ask the Minister, is he going to put something forward to us to say this is what we can do that meets the needs of our clientele in our communities to get those units occupied so people can have a house they can call home.
The Housing Corporation works very hard to try to get people into units. However, we have to make sure that these folks are able to maintain the units and we’re not setting them up for failure. We are working that particular situation. I know we’ve tried to make some contact and I’ll have conversations with the Member about that. We work very hard to get tenants into a lot of these units, the ones that have been vacant for awhile. We don’t want any more vacant units. We’ve managed to turn a lot of them into public housing units just so we can get them occupied. It is still a bit of a challenge but we’re working very hard to make sure that these units are occupied.
Thank you, Mr. McLeod. The honourable Member for Weledeh, Mr. Bromley.
