Mr. Speaker, I have a return to oral questions asked by Mr. Hawkins on May 26th and May 31st, 2005, regarding the Expanded Downpayment Assistance Program. Subsequently Mr. Hawkins inquired a level of assistance provided to clients in the city of Yellowknife under EDAP and whether applications had been turned away due to the lack of resources.

As of the date of Mr. Hawkins’ questions, 31 applicants for EDAP had been declined because they were not eligible for assistance. All declined applications were a result of an applicant’s ineligibility for assistance. At any given time there may be a number of EDAP applications that are considered and processed and require additional information from the client prior to final decision.

Mr. Hawkins expressed concerns about the level of assistance being provided to individual clients and I would like to inform the House that some of the numbers that caused concerns for Members resulted in a coding error that gave incorrect information in the response to the prior question. As requested, updated information on the EDAP in the Yellowknife area has been provided to the Member.

In regards to general concerns over specific numbers, the Access to Information and Protection of Privacy Act prevents us from providing detailed cases that could be used to identify clients. The Housing Corporation is extremely concerned about the protection and the privacy of personal information of our clients.

I would, however, like to take the time to express to Members why it sometimes is necessary for higher award amounts for clients in need. In order to calculate the subsidy levels of EDAP, a sliding scale is used. House pricing includes land costs, monthly shelter costs such as taxes, power, heat, water, insurance premium, maintenance costs, and insurance costs. The national affordable standard is 30 percent. Once the applicant’s income is factored, the calculations will result in assistance ranging from five percent to 40 percent and in order to meet eligibility for larger families, the NWT Housing Corporation came up with another sliding scale in 1993-94 to recognize the size of the bedroom count based on two, three, and four-bedroom units. This allowed the corporation to assist applicants more fairly, based on the size of their families compared to the national operations standard set by CMHC.

The level of funding provided to clients under EDAP has exceeded 40 percent of a home’s value. A prospective client must be able to afford the operation and the maintenance of their homes without spending more than 30 percent of their gross income on shelter. The funding takes a formula on a forgivable loan, which is paid out over a 15-year period. The client must be able to obtain the balance of their mortgage through conventional financing. In the case of a higher subsidy level, which is reflected in the higher need of the client, the client receives an amount in excess of $50,000. In most cases clients would have difficulty qualifying for public housing due to their income levels, but do not have the means of accessing conventional financing from a bank. Often those clients have large families, require more bedrooms and a larger sized house.

Assistance through EDAP is better used by the corporation’s limited resources, taking clients out of public housing to assist them in getting into homeownership. This creates specific savings to the government over the long term. The funding required to maintain public housing units exceeds the level of subsidy provided under EDAP.

Large EDAP amounts such as those that cause concern for the Member allows the Housing Corporation to provide affordable housing to large families for whom assisted homeownership is the only affordable shelter to them. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.