Thank you, Mr. Speaker. We could talk about problems with housing and who it affects until the cows come home, as they say, but we clearly know it affects seniors, new families. It affects large and small communities in different ways, but equally in the sense of it’s a problem.
Mr. Speaker, we could talk about suitability of houses and certainly core needs. We can also talk about the vitality of the community being destroyed as the population leaves without housing options. I’ve cited lots of examples out there, so let’s start with one of the most important questions on this particular issue.
How many new houses are going to be built in this next fiscal year in the Northwest Territories? Let’s start with that.
Thank you, Mr. Hawkins. Minister of Housing, Mr. McLeod.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. We all recognize that housing is a big concern across the Northwest Territories, and in working with the Legislative Assembly, I think the Housing Corporation has done a fairly good job in trying to address all the concerns that are out there.
To the Member’s question, we have… Well, this past year alone we have 46 public housing units, replacement units; we have six new housing units; we have a couple of seniors units – three, actually, seniors units that are being built – then we have 29 new market housing initiatives where we are putting 29 units into communities across the Northwest Territories. We also have our modernization and improvement project of our public housing stock, about 198 units that we are doing this year. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
I appreciate the answer from the Minister. So, we are talking approximately, if I got his numbers correctly as I wrote them down, we are talking about 38 new houses in the Northwest Territories that will change the market in a positive way for Northerners. It doesn’t matter if you live in Yellowknife, you have affordability issues, you have suitability issues here; it doesn’t matter if you live in Paulatuk, the issues are the same. People are struggling for good options.
How does the Minister justify, on average, slightly more than one new house per community in the Northwest Territories as addressing the problem? I get it that they build them one at a time, but we are losing options of three or four. We are not keeping pace with the need.
So the fact is: How is the Minister justifying building only one house per community as a solution? Thank you.
Mr. Speaker, I feel we’re providing more than one house per community. We looked at the community needs survey that was done. We tried to identify some of the highest needs in regions and communities, and we target our investment into those communities. Also, with the market housing initiatives, we’ve had meetings with the NWT Teachers’ Association that identified some of their more challenged communities, so we have tried to target some of our units into those communities.
We have 100 units over the next three years that are going to the communities. That’s just market housing communities. That’s not including the housing investment. I think we are doing a really good job in addressing a lot of the concern from the small communities.
Of course, we are challenged, as this Assembly knows, with the declining CMHC funding and it is hindering our ability to build new public housing units, so we’re having to replace a lot of units. More and more people are getting into homeownership through some of our homeownership programs, so we make targeted investments. One community may not get anything for a while, but their turn will come up and they’ll get their fair share of infrastructure. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
The Minister is actually getting ahead of me on the next question, which talks about a community may not get any infrastructure whatsoever for many years to come. When he says their fair share of infrastructure, that only might mean one or two houses new to that community. It is a positive effect. Also, to be fair to the Minister, very quickly, he said that we are doing a little better than one per community. He’s right; we’re doing 1.15 house per community across the Northwest Territories. That is 38 houses in 33 communities. Let’s give him the credit he deserves by all means, by saying he is building 1.15 house.
We haven’t solved the non-market community initiative problem. We have several communities that have no housing market. Tell me how many houses he plans to build in the Housing Corp this coming year, and by golly, please be more than one per community.
If you look at the units we provide, or if you look at the housing we provide, and if you look over the number of years, we have 3,100 units; we have 23 public housing units that we have on the ground, plus our Market Housing Initiative and our other units that we provide.
I attended a conference that spoke to Aboriginal housing down south – a couple of Members actually came with me – and I think the Northwest Territories is doing a fantastic job providing houses. We heard the story of one house every 15 years for a particular community down south, so I think we’ve done a good job in recognizing and addressing the housing needs across the Northwest Territories.
Could there be improvements? Of course there can, and that’s what we are working on with this Legislative Assembly. We are planning and we are going to be debating that in the upcoming capital budget. I think our budget for this particular year is $36 million, again, invested strategically. Thank you.
Thank you, Mr. McLeod. Final, short supplementary, Mr. Hawkins.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Frankly, I just can’t figure out how the Minister is proud of the job he’s doing and how he keeps saying we are doing a good job when he only builds one house per community per year on average. Those statistics speak for themselves. We’ll let Northerners judge the Minister, Mr. Speaker.
In summary, 19 percent of the houses in the Northwest Territories are in core need; 31.6 percent are houses with problems of some sort. Declining funding is a terrible thing, but it is a terrible crutch to lean on that as, oh my goodness, the funding has been drying up. We have seen inaction year after year on this particular problem.
I challenge the Minister to answer this question: How is the Minister going to increase housing construction in communities for new housing as a solution going forward? Frankly, one house at a time is not solving the need. Do something today. Be bold. We need bold action.
It’s actually 1.15, not one, as the Member pointed out before. But we’ve made significant investment in the last number of years, and I would like the Northwest Territories to be the judge of the work that the NWT Housing Corporation is doing, because they’re seeing it on the front lines. They’re seeing with the new rent scale how you go from a $4,600 full economic rent to no more than $1,600, and somebody’s rent goes from $1,200, because they’re working, to $564. I challenge anybody to say that the NWT Housing Corporation is not addressing the needs of housing across the Northwest Territories, and we’ll continue, in the fiscal environment we’re in, to try and improve the housing in the Northwest Territories.
I think, in the last number of years, again, with the working of the Legislative Assembly, the NWT Housing Corporation has done a very good job, and I would like people out there to be the judge of that. We hear a lot of comments and the housing concerns that we get from residents across the Northwest Territories. We still get a lot, but not as much as there used to be. For the most part, people are fairly pleased with services that are being provided.
Thank you, Mr. McLeod. The Member for Weledeh, Mr. Bromley.
