Thank you very much, Mr. Speaker. Earlier I raised the issue about NWT Corporation home ownership units that are vacant. I’d like to ask the Minister responsible for NWT Housing Corporation what strategy is the department currently using to address these vacant units in our communities. Thank you.
Thank you, Mr. Menicoche. The honourable Minister responsible for the NWT Housing Corporation, Mr. McLeod.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. It was quite a growing concern a few years ago with the number of vacancies that we had in our home ownership portfolio. I always credit a lot of that to the good work done by the corporation in making use of the money that we got from Ottawa. We had to use the money or we would lose it, so we tried to get as many units on the ground, and that left us with the problem of trying to fill a lot of these vacant units.
I think in the last year or so, we’ve done a very good job in filling these units. We’ve converted some of them over to public housing. We’re trying to find qualified clients to put into these units. We just had our intake here recently. The number escapes me, but I think we have about 21 potential approvals across the Northwest Territories. I think there are three in the Member’s riding.
We still realize that we have about 67 vacant units now. We’re going through the application cycle. We are hoping by end of summer to have as many people into those units as possible. If we can’t find clients for them, we may have to look at possibly converting them to public housing again. We’re also starting to use some to rent out to professionals that move to the communities. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
Mr. Speaker, so the Minister was talking about the intake cycle. Is that complete now? Are they currently evaluating all of the clients to see if they can match them to the home ownership programs such as HELP and PATH right now? Thank you.
Mr. Speaker, the Member is correct. The intake cycle is over. We are evaluating a lot of the applications. There are some that get approved fairly quickly because of the information they provide. There are some we still need to work on. I’m not quite sure when the exact evaluation of all applications is done. However, when it is, I will inform the Member and Members of the House. We will see, at the end of that cycle, how many vacant units we have and then our plan going forward with those. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
Mr. Speaker, some of the issues that face my communities are they actually missed the deadlines. I had raised the issue of liaison workers in the communities. We had this program about six to eight years ago. I’d like to ask the Minister if he will review that and maybe even consider that once again. Thank you.
Mr. Speaker, there was a program a few years ago. However, I think when it was determined that we were going to have government service officers in each community, part of their role was going to be exactly that, advising people of all the program deadlines and that with all government programs, including the Northwest Territories Housing Corporation. However, I can inform the Member that, as a corporation, we are looking at roles and responsibilities of our LHOs so we can better serve a lot of these smaller communities. We are developing proposals that we’re hoping to bring forward to committee for their input and see where we go from there. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
Thank you, Mr. McLeod. Final, short supplementary, Mr. Menicoche.
Thank you very much, Mr. Speaker. The Minister mentioned that the smaller remote communities, too, even though they are much smaller, they do need assistance with the clients filling out the application, meeting the deadlines. I would like to ask the Minister if part of the strategy is to be aware of that. Thank you.
Mr. Speaker, we’re going to review how we deliver our programs in the small communities. We want to ensure that our residents in the small communities feel like they are well served by the NWT Housing Corporation in filling out applications. I think we have said in the past that, if there is a need to supply translators so they know exactly what they’re getting into, then we will provide that too. There is still a little bit of work that needs to be done. I think we’re taking some good steps in ensuring all of our residents across the Northwest Territories have equal access to our programs, and have the opportunity to fill out all the proper applications by the deadline so they won’t miss qualifying for any of the programs that we offer. Thank you.
Thank you, Mr. McLeod. The Member for Inuvik Boot Lake, Mr. Moses.
