Thank you, Mr. Speaker. My questions today are addressed to the Minister responsible for the NWT Housing Corporation. The Minister is aware of a very difficult housing situation here in Yellowknife. A number of leased units that the Housing Corporation has leased from a landlord are being removed from the public housing inventory here in Yellowknife. Apart from the disruption to the lives of the tenants, which is a major disruption as anybody can imagine, the action also causes headaches in the ranks in the GNWT, in particular the Housing Corp.
I’d like to know from the Minister how many units at the Inukshuk Co-op are being lost to the Yellowknife public housing inventory, and who took the action to remove these units from the Yellowknife public housing inventory, and how many units are being lost. Thank you.
Thank you, Ms. Bisaro. Minister responsible for the Northwest Territories Housing Corporation, Mr. McLeod.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. The Member is correct; we were leasing 17 units from Inukshuk. They had a board of directors meeting and they had decided that they weren’t going to renew their lease with the NWT Housing Corporation, so that affected 17 units and all those residents in there. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
This is a fairly significant reduction in the capacity of public housing in Yellowknife. I think it’s at least 5 percent. I’d like to know whether or not the NWT Housing Corporation will be looking at replacing these lost units with other ones. Is this a permanent reduction or will we be able to keep the same complement of housing that we have now in public housing in Yellowknife? Thank you.
Mr. Speaker, the Yellowknife Housing Authority is currently over-allocated as far as the number of units that they do have. A lot of it affects the money that we get from CMHC. The money is declining; therefore, the number of units that we’re able to maintain is starting to be affected.
We’ve asked all the communities to look at ways of reducing their stock, because a lot of them are over-allocated on the number of units that they have.
Mr. Speaker, I’m a little concerned to hear the Minister say that Yellowknife is over-allocated. He also referenced other communities. I guess I need to know from the Minister what that term means.
We have a great need for public housing here in Yellowknife. There’s a need for public housing in every community, I think, but I think Yellowknife, as the capital, although it’s a different situation here, we do need more public housing.
I’d like to ask the Minister if he could please explain to me what the term “over-allocated” means. Thank you.
Mr. Speaker, each community is allocated a number of units that they keep in their stock. As we’re bringing new units into stock, a lot of the communities haven’t been reducing their allocation of units by that amount. So if a community got five new units, we would expect them to take five out of stock, because these are public housing replacement units. With the declining CMHC funding, it’s getting unsustainable to be trying to do maintenance on a lot of these units.
I recognize the Member’s point about the need for public housing. We do see that across the Northwest Territories. However, in some situations we try to deal with the number of units that each LHO has, and if there is an opportunity to possibly hang on to some of these units, then we have to explore that option also.
Thank you, Mr. McLeod. Final, short supplementary, Ms. Bisaro.
Thanks, Mr. Speaker. I think I heard the Minister say that they’re going to look at things, but I guess my last question to him would be: Recognizing that there’s a need for more public housing in Yellowknife, what plans does the Housing Corporation have to try and increase the number of units in the public housing inventory here in the city? Thank you.
Mr. Speaker, we have a number of units here in the capital and we are looking, in all the communities, at the number of units that we have there. This is kind of an ongoing issue to see where we can make some changes. Some communities may need to add on to the number that they have; some are a little over-allocated, as I said before. But it’s an ongoing issue and I could commit to the Member, and all Members opposite, that we will continue to have a look at this and make sure that we get to a point where all the housing needs are close to being met or are met, and also having this number of units is not unsustainable with the money that we get from CMHC. Because the difference is going to have to be made up somewhere, and in most cases it would come, I think, before the Legislative Assembly. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
Thank you, Mr. McLeod. The Member for Deh Cho, Mr. Nadli.
