Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Today in my Member’s statement I spoke of the CMHC declining funds impact on the Northwest Territories Housing Corporation. I have questions for the Minister of the Housing Corporation. Has the Minister given direction to the Northwest Territories Housing Corporation staff to develop a plan to address the CMHC declining fund? Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
Thank you, Mr. Beaulieu. The honourable Minister of NWT Housing Corporation, Mr. Robert McLeod.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. We have started a preliminary plan on dealing with some of the declining federal funding from CMHC. The Member is absolutely correct. We are starting to look at how we can work with the different units we have putting multiplexes and just looking at the overall picture. So there is a preliminary plan that we are putting in place and we will continue to develop that as we go along. Thank you.
Mr. Speaker, will the Minister provide this House with a framework of this plan that’s been developed by the staff at the NWT Housing Corporation on the CMHC declining fund? Thank you.
I’d be willing to provide Members with a framework for a plan. Obviously, we’d have to be looking at things like managing our portfolio a lot better, extending the life of the units we have on the ground.
Another part of the plan would be arrears collection. We have approximately $23 million in arrears across the Northwest Territories and that would go a long way in helping to alleviate some of the loss of revenue we have from CMHC.
We are working with our colleagues in Nunavut and the Yukon to approach the federal government, CMHC, and let them know the effect the funding will have on the housing in the Northwest Territories, as well as working with my federal colleagues, the other Ministers of Housing, getting their support in trying to see if we can get that funding to continue. So we are working on starting to get the plans in place to deal with some of the funding. I’d be willing to provide Members with a bit of a framework, if that is what the Member is looking for.
Can the Minister outline other aspects of the plan that the NWT Housing Corporation will be employing as it pertains to creating homeownership out of public housing tenants? Thank you.
Ideally we’d like to see a lot of our public housing owners become homeowners. If it means a particular unit they are in, we are always willing to look at those options. With all the homeownerships we have put in the Northwest Territories over the number of years, we are getting to the point now where the Housing Corporation is actually starting to repair a lot of those units that we gave to the people in the first place. So that is something that we are going to have a look at. There may come a day where we may have to determine are we just a provider of social housing and maybe ease away from the homeownership part of it.
It’s hard for us to put up new public housing now because of declining funding, so what we are doing is putting up replacement public housing. So we are looking at a lot of different options that we can use as far as reducing our public housing stock and bringing new units on board to deal with the funding. Thank you.
Thank you, Mr. McLeod. Final supplementary, Mr. Beaulieu.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I hope the Housing Corporation doesn’t move away from homeownership. I think that’s the way to develop and build small markets in the communities.
Mr. Speaker, the CMHC fund has been declining for over 10 years now. What has the Minister and the corporation done to address the decline to date? Thank you.
The initiatives that I pointed out before were designed to deal with some of the declining funding to date; more specifically, the replacement rather than adding to the public housing stock. The Member is correct; we’ve cumulatively lost $5.8 million in CMHC funding in the past 10 years. This year alone is $676,000. We have a huge challenge facing us and we’re doing, as a corporation, what we can to try to deal with some of the challenges and that one of the messages that I’ve been, I wouldn’t say preaching, but across the Northwest Territories in all the meetings I’ve gone to with the public, is the importance of dealing with public housing arrears. Again, that $23 million will go a long way in helping us deal with some of the deficit and it will go a long way to being able to invest some of that $23 million back into the public housing stock. This is one where I think all of the NWT Housing Corporation tenants and clients are going to have to step up to the plate and realize that we are facing a huge challenge and that we’re going to have to make some hard decisions very soon.
Thank you, Mr. McLeod. The honourable Member for Yellowknife Centre, Mr. Hawkins.
