WHEREAS “economic rent” for public housing in small and remote communities it unaffordable for most working tenants, due to local economic conditions;
AND WHEREAS the system used to determine economic rent is not fair to smaller communities where there are fewer public housing units;
AND WHEREAS the current system of adjusting the rental rates in public housing according to the fluctuating income of tenants is unnecessarily complex for both tenants and housing administration;
AND WHEREAS arrears in public housing are a perpetual problem for tenants and the Northwest Territories Housing Corporation;
AND WHEREAS this government needs to stimulate the depressed economies of small and remote communities;
AND WHEREAS practical rental options in public housing could enable more tenants to continue working instead of turning to income support;
AND WHEREAS a maximum rent program, as an option offered to tenants receiving private income, could help reduce many of these problems, while maintaining the public housing program for those who wish to be there;
NOW THEREFORE I MOVE, seconded by the honourable Member for Tu Nedhe, that this Legislative Assembly strongly recommends that the Minister responsible for the Northwest territories Housing Corporation establish an optional maximum rent scale for public housing in communities with no real private market, with rents set as follows:
$1,200 per month for four or five-bedroom units;
$1,000 per month for three-bedroom units;
$800 per month for two-bedroom units; and
$600 per month for one-bedroom units.
Thank you, Mr. Jacobson. A motion is on the floor. The motion is in order. To the motion. The honourable Member for Nunakput, Mr. Jacobson.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Thank you, colleagues. We see arrears piling up in our public housing in the small communities and across the Territory. It’s because even people who are working cannot afford the so-called economic rent that they’re being charged by the Housing Corporation. Economic rent is so high it actually encourages people to give up working and go to income support. We have to do just the opposite.
We have to encourage people to keep working. They have to see that they are getting ahead. Economies in small communities are weak, with a few jobs. Everything is expensive, especially trying to buy food for your kids, clothe them. It’s making it tough on families.
Housing arrears are leading to evictions and more eviction notices. The current system of economic rent is just not sustainable. We need an alternative.
It would be good if the alternative support local economy that would, is what its purpose was. The tenants in the public housing need affordable options.
The Maximum Rent Program addresses many problems. It helps keep the people in their homes and keep the people working. The Maximum Rent Program would also help the Housing Corporation with a simpler system and be able to do more. More people could pay their rent.
This is a two-tiered system. We’re going to keep the system that they have already. This option that I’m providing is an option for if the people want to be able to pay for the four or five-bedroom. People that have dual incomes in the small communities, they would be paying $1,200 a month instead of $3,000. It would really help the people when people are trying to get ahead and be able to buy food and clothing for their kids and seeing that they’re actually making headway instead of the government coming in and swooping 30 percent out of their cheque on their gross.
This option is one that I really encourage the government to take. I’m born and raised in the communities, like in Tuk, I’m an Inuvialuit and you never see people want to give hardship to another person. Government could do this. Government is in a position to do good right now to offer this option. It’s an option with an open-handed approach. I really encourage the Minister and his department to make this happen.
I look forward to all Members who will support my motion and I thank them for their support.
Thank you, Mr. Jacobson. To the motion. The honourable Member for Tu Nedhe, Mr. Beaulieu.
Mahsi cho, Mr. Speaker. I second the motion. I am aware that we have had passed, this would be the fourth motion of this type concerning this area. The problems are huge. It’s not equitable as it currently stands. The rents in communities where there’s few public housing, pay a lot more of their gross income if they get jobs. Right now, as it stands, this motion recommends an equalization across the board of people that go to work, go into a certain size house, they pay a certain amount across the board. It doesn’t matter if you live in a community where there are 300 public housing units or you live in a community where there are 30. When you live in a community where there are 30, under the current system the cost of administration and the cost of maintenance and everything is distributed amongst the 30 units and it’s very high. Also in most of the smaller communities the price is very high. Fuel is high, power is also costly, water and sewer is costly, because everything is on smaller scale and it’s more remote.
This kind of equalizes it. This is where we should go. This is the direction we should go. This is a win-win for the people in the communities and for the government. It keeps people at work. It has people paying something.
Right now if an individual goes to work in a small community, there is potential for them to start paying $3,000 a month. Even if you have a real good job, that’s a little more than one cheque. That’s one cheque. Because even though you can sit here and say it’s only 30 percent of their gross income, well, income tax will take 30 percent too, and then there’s the cost of working. There’s the cost of daycare, if you have to have daycare when you go to work. There’s those additional costs that the government must look at and take into consideration, not just looking focused in on the shelter cost. They have to look at all the other factors that come into play here. And the people will pay something. Like, you know, better that than sitting at home drawing income support, having the government pay them for doing nothing.
So this is an opportunity to put people back to work, especially in communities where employment is very rare. A lot of these communities we’re talking about, the reason they’re non-market communities is because there’s not much employment. It’s very difficult to buy and sell a house. That’s a non-market community because there’s no employment, there’s no income. People can’t buy your house because they don’t have the money. This kind of sets things in the right direction and I hope that the government does employ this policy change.
Thank you, Mr. Beaulieu. To the motion. The honourable Member for Weledeh, Mr. Bromley.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. This motion suggests yet another way to skin the cat; an alternative to dropping the affordable housing threshold from 30 percent to 25 percent of gross income as proposed in another motion passed in the House this winter. This motion again recognizes the special considerations needed for our small communities where employment rates are devastatingly low.
I would like to compliment my colleagues for this innovative idea and request that the government clearly hear that our housing policies in this area are not working. New policies such as this motion proposes are required.
Ultimately we need a solid Anti-Poverty Strategy that embeds and delivers new approaches such as this one. That actually helps people get out of poverty.
I will be supporting this motion.
Thank you, Mr. Bromley. To the motion. The honourable Member for Mackenzie Delta, Mr. Krutko.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I too will be supporting the motion. I, for one, do feel that we have to fill the gap between market and non-market communities and we have to be fair to all our working residents in our communities. I think that we as government have provided housing in the past, whether we called it staff housing. We still provide housing in our communities for the nursing staff in our communities. They have a fixed rate. They know what their rent is when they go into those facilities in our communities. They know exactly how much they’re going to have to pay for that particular unit. So we already have a program running in our communities. All we’re asking is to expand the program to offer the same type of programs to the residents of the community with a set rate per unit based on the unit that’s there.
I think it’s the question of not only fairness but also of ensuring that we are as government being able to provide government programs and services and deal with the fundamental challenges we face in our communities. One of them is dealing with affordable housing and professional housing in our communities to attract those individuals to stay in our communities, provide government programs and services, and not see that as a barrier to delivering government programs and services. All I’m asking is, we already have a program similar to this in our communities with the nursing staff. We already know that they’re paying about $1,000 a month. We’re asking that you provide the same program to the other working residents in our communities.
Thank you, Mr. Krutko. To the motion. The honourable Member for Nahendeh, Mr. Menicoche.
Thank you very much, Mr. Speaker. I too will be supporting the motion, but I do have more to add. It’s a very good motion. I know that the honourable Member for Nunakput wanted some options for housing but I really feel that we should also be, it should be the whole program. That’s the way we looked at it.
At one time we did have our housing program before it was converted to ECE and back again, and even further back it was listed at 75 percent of household income. It was a real break. Then the rent was at $600 a month. I don’t know, along the way somebody signed off to produce it up to 90 percent of income and then 100 percent of income and now to this date they don’t even get credit for how many children they have. It’s full economic rent. I’ve always been against that.
Other areas in Canada have special economic zones and they do have low-rental units, like $500 or $600 a month, in order to stimulate the economy and stimulate employment so that people can make a living and move into the depressed areas. I think our whole Northwest Territories should be a special economic zone and we should be taking care of the rent because that’s what governments do. When there’s a need, then the government comes to the action. It’s not about because they can pay more we make them pay more. They’re just barely getting by as it is. I had a constituent that actually told me, he said, don’t call it a low-rental unit if it’s not low rent. Just a couple of those things.
I strongly support the motion and I’m glad that it came forward. We have many motions on this side, like my colleague for Tu Nedhe said. Government’s going to have to start listening. We’re going to have to make those programs more flexible so that it fits the needs of our people.
Thank you, Mr. Menicoche. To the motion. The honourable Member for Frame Lake, Ms. Bisaro.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I support this motion. I believe that the intent and the background for this motion is very similar to something that I raised in the House last week. I was talking about transitional housing. This is talking about public housing.
---Interjection
I’m complimenting the mover and the seconder, you guys.
I think that the strategy that’s espoused here is something that the government has to take note of. We need to look at enabling our people to get out of poverty, those that are there. The only way we’re going to be able to do it is by providing them with assistance. It is obvious to Members, certainly on this side of the House, that the policies and strategies that we are currently employing are not working. We need to totally revisit where we’re at.
This motion talks about setting maximum rents in public housing. There have been other suggestions to change the maximum rent scale all over the place. There have been suggestions to assist people in transitional housing to keep them at work so that they don’t go back onto income support.
The Housing Corporation I believe is doing a review of their Shelter Policy and that’s a good thing, but Lord knows when we’re going to see the end result of that review. I certainly hope that these suggestions and previous suggestions from Members on this side of the House and motions on this side of the House are going to be considered within that review. All of them go to the basic principle of getting our people out of poverty, and that should be where the Housing Corporation should start. Provide housing that enables people as opposed to housing that disables people and I think that this motion goes a long way to doing that.
I hope that the Housing Corporation is listening. I certainly support this motion and I encourage the rest of my colleagues to do the same.
Thank you, Ms. Bisaro. To the motion. The honourable Member for Yellowknife Centre, Mr. Hawkins.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I’d like to compliment the last speaker, Ms. Bisaro, because I think she said it perfectly. It enables hope and I think it certainly inspires people to do more and become more. That’s a lot of the reason why we’re here, is to help people and give them that chance. Government policy will quite often try to focus so hard on inspiring people to be more and when they do stand up on their two legs, we find these housing policies pull the ground out from underneath them rather than giving them a chance to get running and build momentum and inspire themselves again to do more and be more.
Mr. Speaker, as alluded to earlier, this is a process, this is a motion that works towards breaking the cycle of poverty, which is holding a lot of people back. For that fact, I will be supporting the motion. Thank you.
Thank you, Mr. Hawkins. The honourable Member for Sahtu, Mr. Yakeleya.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. MLA Bromley has said it well, that this is just another way to skin a cat here, so telling the Minister and the government there’s another option to look at. Mr. Speaker, I say that because in front of me here I have three motions speaking about the rental and the issue of housing in the Northwest Territories that were debated and passed in the House. There’s another motion for the Minister to look and to help our people.
Mr. Speaker, in 2006 the United Nations called the issue of housing and homelessness in Canada a national emergency. I think that’s something that we’re looking at right here in the Northwest Territories in Canada, that this government here and all governments, our responsibility lies with us. It’s estimated that four million Canadians are in need of affordable housing, Mr. Speaker, and growing.
Mr. Speaker, as I heard from my colleagues, these issues here that we deal with, especially with what Mr. Jacobson has raised, is very, very good because we want to help our young people to get into the economy when there’s work in our communities. The regions that I talk about, the economy is very short and then we have to, sort of, wait until we get an oil and gas exploration or we go trapping or, like it says, that they walk down to the income support office. People do want to make a difference in their lives. They do see the value of a house, Mr. Speaker, because you know the housing insecurity is sometimes a symptom and sometimes a cause of poverty in our communities, and that causes other issues that we have to deal with.
Mr. Speaker, I do want to say that with the housing in our communities, and this initiative is a good step to bring other issues such as evictions. Mr. Speaker, I’ve been notified that in the Sahtu there were 33 rental orders -- 16 for Tulita and 17 for Deline -- to leave the premises, leave the house. Now this is going to cause 33 other issues with families, people asked to leave the units, because as we stand right here, they cannot afford the public housing units. We have to do something different. We have to do a made-in-the-north solution to keep people in their houses.
Housing has done a lot of work not to kick out, as the Minister said. His job is not about evicting people from their units. However, the policies that we operate under now lead us to that. As much as we try to do repayments, give them a chance, we need to look at something, as Mr. Menicoche said, look at a zone where a young man who has finished high school or college can come back into one of our communities, get a job for two or three months, learn how to operate his house, and pay a certain rent and not be worried that it’s going to cost $1,800, $1,400, that he can afford it, and that he should not be penalized for working for a short period of time. Then we could look at situations like that.
I think that’s what this motion is saying. It’s about keeping people in their homes and making them feel good about them. They are dependent on us. Government has caused that dependence over the years and now we need to make sure that they can handle these units in an affordable amount. Some of them can’t even pay for their food or any other things that they want to buy for themselves and I think, again, as Mr. Bromley has said, this is just another way to skin a cat and I hope the Minister will look at this motion, as with other motions, look at how this issue here can be resolved in a manner that knows that people can live in a house and they do have a chance in life, especially in our small communities where it’s very hard to find a job let alone live there. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
Thank you, Mr. Yakeleya. I’ll go to the Minister responsible for the NWT Housing Corporation, Mr. Robert McLeod.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. The Members have pointed out the fact they’ve brought forward a few motions and I assure the Members that we take those motions very seriously. We are looking at the motions that they’ve brought forward and some of the recommendations we’ve made. We’ve heard a lot of comments this afternoon on trying to get people more independent and getting them out there. That’s our ultimate goal. I mean, we say the visions and goals of the 16th Legislative Assembly is to have healthy, vibrant, safe communities and have our people out there being independent. That’s one thing we try to do as the Housing Corporation. It’s hard sometimes to think that we’re going to meet those goals that we set out if we continue to find ways that we can make people be less responsible.
Having said that, Mr. Speaker, I was looking at some of the recommendations and the motions they made here. I know there are a few of them that, I think, in my conversations with some of the Members, I believe we’re addressing. We have the Shelter Policy review that’s going on right now. The rent scale review is a part of that. I had spoken to Members about the regionalized assessments, which I think some Members thought was a very good idea. We are doing work on a lot of the motions you brought forward.
I want to point out a couple of statistics, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, we have, across the Northwest Territories, approximately 2,400 public housing units. We have 21 percent of people paying zero. We have 45, almost 46 percent paying $32. So we have 67 percent paying $32 or less. Out of the 2,400 units, we have approximately 12 to 19 at any given time paying economic rent. There are very few people across the Northwest Territories who pay economic rent. But having said that, I mean, we recognize the Members’ concerns and some of the issues that they’ve brought forward, but I can assure them that the Housing Corporation has heard the other motions that you’ve brought forward. That’s one of the reasons why we’re trying to do the Shelter Policy review, is to address a lot of the motions that you’ve brought forward.
Mr. Speaker, there is really not much more I can add. I was looking at the last part of the motion, “therefore I move,” and I wasn’t quite sure exactly what that meant. Do you want to cap the rents? Is that what it is? For a five-bedroom unit it doesn’t say whether these folks are working or not. I mean, it’s something that we’ll have to clarify. Is it just going to be charging everybody so those that are paying $32 living in a five-bedroom unit now may have to potentially pay $1,200? These are questions that we’d have to have answered, so we’ll look forward to having the discussion with committee on some of the recommendations they made and sharing some of our thoughts with them. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
Thank you, Mr. McLeod. I’ll go to the mover of the motion for closing comments. Mr. Jacobson.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Out of the 67 percent of what the Minister is stating, the 2,400 units that we are paying the 21 percent paying zero dollars, 46 percent paying $32, it’s a total of 67 percent. The other 23 percent, Mr. Speaker, I think this option is going to help. It’s an option.
What I’m asking for, the Housing Corporation can keep their economic rent scale. This is an option B. If people are working, say if myself and my wife are working, we’re in a rental unit, we’re going to choose option B. This is the option that I’m providing today. For a five-bedroom unit I’ll pay $1,200 a month for the family, and that’s an option. If the people that want to stay under the current housing policy, they could go ahead. It’s a choice. But we’re providing a choice, Mr. Speaker, that’s going to help the people in the long run so people can actually buy food for their kids, pay their power bill, be able to have extra funds to do things. For myself, the Minister said this is an option. For myself, when you look at it, this is going to help the people. The people should not have to worry, Mr. Speaker, about a roof over their heads. If we’re lucky in the communities, we’ve got 20 government jobs. And those are the people that are lucky enough to get them.
The rent scale we are going off, this is an option. I’m going in with an open-handed approach because I’m not going to tell the government what to do. This is an option. I want to work with them to make this happen. The people ought to be able, like I said, not worry about a roof over their head and be a little bit proud of what they have because they’re paying their rent and it’s an option for them to do that. Our people in the Territories, we have to help them as much as we can as a government. This government can do that. This Minister could go and say option B, Jackie, we did it, we’re going to do something about it. Under their assessment that they’re doing, it’s possible. Again, this is an option. I’m not going to put fear into the communities right now. That’s what I don’t want. You can stay under the current system and this system is option B, it’s up to the tenant to choose option B. Again, I don’t want to get anybody in the communities scared of the rent scale I’m providing or trying to get into the system.
This has come forward so we can help the people in the Northwest Territories, people who are being evicted. That shouldn’t happen. People shouldn’t have to worry about a roof over their head. Again, we’re just trying to make a better place for the people to live in the Northwest Territories. I know this Minister can do that.
