Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I spoke yesterday in my statement of a number of issues raised during the Yellowknife municipal election, but time did not permit me to list them all.
Another election concern mentioned many times during the campaign was the cost of living, and a huge contributor to Yellowknife’s cost of living is housing. This city lacks both affordable housing and enough housing for the homeless, including the homeless who couch surf.
Mr. Bromley spoke yesterday of lengthy waiting lists at all of the local housing authorities, Yellowknife included. If you’re a single person in Yellowknife looking to get into public housing, you won’t. There are not enough units and the policies place singles as an absolute bottom priority for public housing.
There’s one particular wait list that I’m especially concerned about and that is the waiting list at Rockhill, the only transitional housing facility in Yellowknife. I was shocked to hear last week that their waiting list is at 150 families and increasing daily. That is in addition to the applications for public housing at the Yellowknife Housing Authority.
Yellowknife is a magnet community and many NWT residents move to Yellowknife from their own community to access the programs and services that are offered here. Yellowknife needs more public housing and more transitional housing.
Because this is a large community compared to others in the NWT, because there are many single family homes and a thriving rental market here, it is assumed, wrongly, that anyone living in Yellowknife can find housing for themselves and their families. This works for most, but low-income families are seriously struggling.
As I said, there are over 150 applicants on the waiting list at the YWCA transitional housing. Why such a long list? Because people can’t afford the rent charged for market housing. The current vacancy rate of less than 1 percent favours landlords, and public housing units are just not available.
Yellowknife needs more public housing and more transitional housing. The NWT Housing Corporation has about 2,400 public housing units throughout the NWT, and that’s in 23 of our communities. How many of those public housing units are in Yellowknife? Yellowknife has only 289 units. That means 12 percent of the total public housing units in the NWT are in Yellowknife. Twelve percent to serve 50 percent of the NWT’s population. That’s not enough and the Housing Corporation must act to fill Yellowknife’s urgent need.
Thank you, Ms. Bisaro. The honourable Member for Range Lake, Mr. Dolynny.
