Thank you, Mr. Speaker. My questions are directed to the Minister of the Housing Corporation. In light of the switchover from the rent supp from the Department of Education to the Housing Corporation, we’re still getting calls from our communities that depend on a fly-in income support worker who goes into the community to do the assessment and then flies back out. What we’re finding is people are still being charged economic rent. In some cases the whole community is charged economic rent until the income support worker arrives. I think that through this transfer back to the Housing Corporation I was hoping we could avoid this.
I’d like to ask the Minister of the Housing Corporation if there is a possibility for those fly-in communities that the income support worker has to fly in or drive in to, if the local housing authority could receive the rent supp so that they can administer it in the local housing authorities.
Thank you, Mr. Krutko. The honourable Minister responsible for the NWT Housing Corporation, Mr. Robert McLeod.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. That has been a concern raised by tenants from a lot of the communities where they only have access to fly-in/fly-out workers. The whole transfer should, the local housing authorities should be doing the rental assessments by June. That’s our goal right now. However, if there’s an opportunity for some leeway given to those that are getting charged full economic rent, the LHOs are usually pretty good at adjusting the rents once they get the proper documentation. It is something that we have about three or four months now until the actual assessments go back to Housing. I can commit to the Member that I will follow up on it and see if there’s anything we can do in the interim until the rental assessment transfer takes place.
This problem seems to be occurring mostly in the Mackenzie Delta region where we have isolated communities, that income support workers are brought in because there is no local income support worker. I’d like to ask the Minister if there is a possibility that we can transfer the authority of the paperwork to the local housing authorities and then have the cheque cut directly from the regional office to those communities.
We already know how many clients we have. We already know who is on income support. We already know who gets the supp. I’d like to know if there’s a way that we could speed this up by transferring dollars from one department to the Housing Corporation from ECE to hopefully resolve this problem before the date the Minister mentioned of June.
We do have LHOs right now that are quite capable of taking over the assessments. However, we were hoping to wait until the June date to make sure we had everything set to go before we implemented. But if there is an opportunity for some of the LHOs to maybe take this on a little earlier, I can follow up on that and see if the LHOs are ready. I know most of them are, but we’ll see if the opportunity is there for us to do this. I will follow up on that.
I would also ask the Minister if he could inform the communities that this is going to take place. I believe the community of Sachs Harbour does not have an income support worker now. They used to have an income support worker but do not have one now and they have to bring someone in from Inuvik. Same thing for Tsiigehtchic, they have to bring someone in either from Fort McPherson or Inuvik. If they can find a way to work with these communities that are facing this challenge where the people are being charged economic rent and the problem is that hopefully we won’t have to evict anybody because this transfer has taken place. I’d like to get a commitment from the Minister to inform the communities and maybe have something posted so the people can realize that even if they are being charged economic rent, they won’t have to pay the whole thing unless the assessment has taken place.
That has been a concern raised by folks across the Territories, because Housing, according to their policies, are obliged to charge economic rent if the assessments aren’t done. There’s been an issue getting some of the assessments over from the income support workers quick enough. The LHOs have been charging full economic rent. However, they’re understanding the situation and they do make adjustments to the tenants’ assessments once they get the proper documentation.
I will commit to the Member that we will try to get the message out there that there is an opportunity for those that have been charged full economic rent waiting for the assessment from ECE. I’ll make the commitment that we’ll try to get the message out there that once the proper documentation is in place, then it will be adjusted.
Thank you, Mr. McLeod. The time for question period has expired. I will allow the Member a short supplementary question. Mr. Krutko.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I also believe that we have to work with a lot of the housing authorities. From the information I saw, the majority of the housing authorities are in a deficit situation and a lot of it is because of the time that they get paid from ECE for the rent supp. I think, if anything, we can hopefully work with the local housing authorities and the tenants and get them out of the arrears they are in to keep the residents from being evicted from their units because of technicalities due to transfer of paper from one department to another.
There have been a lot of challenges with the transfer over. However, we’re quite confident that once the assessments are transferred back to Housing, then I think we’re going to see an improvement in a lot of the services we deliver; especially the arrears. There are a lot of people who have been accumulating arrears because the assessments are not being done quickly enough. So we’re working with tenants and we will continue to work with the LHOs, because this has affected their overall financial position and we’re quite confident once we move the assessment back to the LHOs, that will continue to improve.
