Thank you, Mr. Beaulieu. Mr. Speaker, in my Member’s statement I spoke of the NWT Housing Corporation delivering programs to seniors and the tax and lease arrears being a deterrent to that delivery. I would like to ask the Minister of the NWT Housing Corporation some questions. Can the Minister change the policy of the repair programs so that land and tax arrears will not adversely affect the approval of seniors from obtaining repair programs for their units? Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
Thank you, Mr. Beaulieu. The honourable Minister responsible for the NWT Housing Corporation, Mr. Robert McLeod.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, the NWT Housing Corporation goes a long way in trying to assist seniors in home repairs and getting work done on their units and getting into homeownership. There are many things we do for them. If this is something that is a concern, I’d have to explore that with officials from the Housing Corporation to see if there is something that we might be able to do to address this concern. Thank you.
I guess I’m asking for a change of policy, which would be long term. But at this point in the year and the importance of the construction season, can the Minister direct his delivery staff in the regions to set aside issues pertaining to land arrears as far as tax and leases go for the delivery to our seniors’ households? Thank you.
All those that wish to enter the program through the Housing Corporation are encouraged to apply. There is a process that we have to go through as far as addressing policy changes. So I would encourage those that may know that they’re in arrears, to apply and then the district offices will follow the process as it’s laid out. Thank you.
For the Housing Corporation to be able to address the size of the problem with coordinating issues pertaining to senior households, can the Minister separate the seniors’ core need issues from the rest of the households like families and single peoples’ core need issues and do that as a top priority? Thank you.
Providing programs to seniors is one of our priorities. We do have some programs that are designed specifically for seniors through the Housing Corp and through MACA. We have preventative maintenance programs. So we do have some programs geared towards seniors, but as I was mentioning before, we will look at all ways that we can improve our service and delivery to seniors. We could look at possibly identifying a lot of the seniors out there. The Member has actually been very helpful in identifying a lot of seniors in his constituency that might qualify for some programs. So we continue to take that work on and applying for the Preventative Maintenance Program. Once the seniors are in the system, then they continue to receive that benefit every year. So that’s one of the ways that we track the amount of seniors that are in there. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
Thank you, Mr. McLeod. Final supplementary, Mr. Beaulieu.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, that’s good. I would like to thank the Minister for that response. Can the Minister develop a delivery strategy that’s focused on seniors so that when we go back to the seniors’ households and discuss housing issues with them, that we are able to tell them that there is some certain specific attention being paid to those households? Can the Minister develop a delivery strategy for seniors’ households? Thank you.
This is a concern that we’ve heard from some of the Members on how we deliver programs to the seniors and I had committed earlier to the Member for Tu Nedhe that we do have district staff going into the community. If there were seniors that needed our staff to go see them and help them fill out the applications and also with translation, they’d be willing to do that. So we continue to refine how we deliver our programs for seniors because we do want our seniors to have a nice, comfortable lifestyle and if there is anything we can do to assist with that, that’s something we are constantly looking at doing. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
Thank you, Mr. McLeod. The honourable Member for Mackenzie Delta, Mr. Krutko.
