Thank you very much, Mr. Speaker. This question is for the Minister responsible for the NWT Housing Corporation. He actually preceded my Member’s statement which I had scheduled for next week on vacant housing. Nevertheless, it’s a serious concern in my riding and we’d still like to address it.
The Minister does say that the intake period ends today and I hope that many of my constituents did file applications and make the effort to get in. I’d just like to know, will the Minister be able to compile intake numbers and provide those numbers to myself?
Thank you, Mr. Menicoche. The honourable Minister responsible for the NWT Housing Corporation, Mr. Robert McLeod.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Once the application process is over today I will be able to provide some numbers to the Members, if they wish to see the number of applicants in their communities.
During my constituency tour this fall many of my constituents continued to tell me that because they’re being in arrears, that they’re not eligible and they actually didn’t want to apply again this year. What kind of flexibility in terms of eligibility does the NWT Housing Corporation have when they are viewing a client’s application if they have some arrears or big arrears? How do they manage those?
Mr. Speaker, arrears is a huge concern. That is why I have been trying to get the message out across the NWT that arrears need to be taken care of because it affects your ability to access some of the programs. However, that being said, one of the programs, the HELP program, does allow a minimum amount of arrears. I believe it is up to $5,000, and the flexibility, I have also asked the corporation, as I have said in my Minister’s statement, to look at the core need income threshold and maybe be a little more flexible in that, because we have a lot of people out there that would be good homeowners, however, some are just likely over the core need threshold. I have asked them to be a little more flexible when looking at that. That is why I am quite confident, Mr. Speaker, that we will see a good majority of these vacant units fill up after the intake period, once all applications are processed. Thank you.
Mr. Speaker, I, too, look for some success in this intake period during the fall time. However, those constituents that do have arrears, Mr. Speaker, still speak to me about their disputing how those arrears occurred, how they happened. Some of them are very old. I have raised continuously with the Minister and in this House about it and an appeal mechanism within the Housing Corporation. When is the Minister going to enact such a committee? Or, actually, it should be an independent committee, Mr. Speaker. Thank you.
Mr. Speaker, we are in the process of doing that right now. We are hoping to have an appeals committee in place by April 1, 2011. Thank you.
Thank you, Mr. McLeod. Final supplementary, Mr. Menicoche.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. In the case of a community, if there are no eligible clients for a particular unit, what is the Minister’s plan to allocate for that particular unit in the community? Thank you.
Mr. Speaker, if we have no eligible client for that one particular unit, as I have said before, we will try another targeted intake to see if there may be eligible applicants that we may have missed. If that fails, then we would speak to communities to see if they have... We have had community groups approaching us about the availability of some of our youths. We have said to hold off until after our application process. All that being failed, we have to... We will consider turning them over to a public housing unit, because that is one of our biggest needs in a lot of our communities. Thank you.
Thank you, Mr. McLeod. The honourable Member for Great Slave, Mr. Abernethy.
