Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Today I want to describe the tragic consequences created by our housing policies by providing the experience in just one family’s life.
Last Thursday a woman at my Dettah constituency meeting explained her situation this way: A mother of five children, aged two to ten, she and her spouse lived in public housing. Based on their combined modest incomes, rent was pegged at $1,200 per month, or 30 percent of gross earnings, equivalent to about 40 percent of take-home pay. Groceries are $1,200 a month for five kids and two adults. Add $1,200 for rent on a household take-home income of $3,200 and that leaves a family of seven with $800 a month for all the other necessities of life. These are the working poor and, not surprisingly, they couldn’t make it on this income.
When the Housing Corporation switched rent collection to what everyone in Dettah calls “the welfare office,” my constituent went every month to Yellowknife to personally deliver her documents. You can’t fax them in. She quit going when she got sick of “being treated like dirt.” That’s when arrears began mounting. She now owes $50,000. She has filed her husband’s last four years’ pay stubs with Housing and has been waiting since June to have the arrears rolled back. In the meantime, she and her spouse are both paying down arrears, taking $200 a month more out of their $800 disposable income. Based on her current deduction, she will clear her arrears in about 25 years.
So how did my constituent get by and provide for the kids? I will tell you. Despite her young children, she started working and moved out of her own home and is now living with a friend so that household income for the rental unit would drop, making her spouse eligible for a greater rent subsidy. The net result, Mr. Speaker, we forced a mother of five children to move out on her young family. We tore a family apart, made them jump through the only hoops available to keep a roof over their kids’ heads and food on the table.
This is beyond tragic. It is inhumane. I could go down the streets in my riding and find an equally desperate story at almost every public housing doorstep.
Mr. Speaker, I seek unanimous consent to conclude my statement. Mahsi.
---Unanimous consent granted
This isn’t about theory or process or policy reform; this is about misery and a broken home this government caused with poorly considered, ultimately destructive operational changes.
I will be asking the Minister questions on how any of us can hold our heads up and what we plan to do about this. I will ask the House to consider a motion later today. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
Thank you, Mr. Bromley. The honourable Member for Great Slave, Mr. Abernethy.
