Thank you, Mr. Speaker. My questions are also for Minister McLeod today. The recent reports from the YWCA in Yellowknife show that there are 64 families in emergency and transitional housing in the last fiscal year with more than 100 families on the waiting list, 50 women waiting to get into Lynn’s Place here in Yellowknife, 152 families on the waiting list to get into Yellowknife Housing Authority’s housing units. So these are obviously appalling numbers. Housing First programs are getting lots of kudos as a housing solution across North America.
I’m wondering: what is the Minister’s understanding of Housing First programs, their successes and their applicability here in the NWT. Mahsi.
Thank you, Mr. Bromley. Minister of Lands, Mr. McLeod.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. We have done some research into Housing First and we are working with the Department of Justice to integrative case management and we’re exploring the possibility of a Housing First model. I believe that the City of Yellowknife is one of the only communities in the Northwest Territories that’s large enough to access some of the funding that the federal government has made available. So I think they’re also trying to pilot a Housing First project and we’re working with them. Thank you.
Thanks for that response. The Minister anticipated my next question. The City of Yellowknife has indeed committed to the Housing First concept to try to alleviate the homeless situation here. A recent point in time count from the 150 Yellowknifers self-identified as homeless in May of 2015, that’s the spring.
So how exactly is the Minister working with the City of Yellowknife? The Minister noted he was. I appreciate that. How exactly is he working with the City of Yellowknife to help implement the Housing First program? Mahsi.
We’re a member of the Community Advisory Board and we have had some initial meetings with the mayor on the task force and the Housing First concept. They are leading the work and we’ll continue to work with them.
The Housing Corporation, being an infrastructure department, we would be in a good position to provide technical advice on any infrastructure projects that they may need to work on going forward Thank you.
I am calling for a cross-departmental response here and headed up by the Housing Corporation, although they are primarily capital approach, they certainly have a lot of housing programs. Housing First recognizes that the first step to helping homeless people out of poverty is to put a roof over their heads. Only then can the identifying problems that lead to homelessness be addressed effectively, sort of a step number two. In some areas civil society contributes to the caring of a family with a Housing First client to help provide social supports.
I’d like to ask the Minister, how is he working with Health and Social Services, with ECE, other relevant departments and the public towards a comprehensive solution through Housing First for our hard-to-house residents? Mahsi.
We work closely with the Department of Health and ECE. We sit as members on the Community Advisory Board. We have a number of programs that we deliver to help try and alleviate the problem of homelessness. We make contributions to some local groups that try to combat that. So it is, as the Member I think said, getting to be a problem that is increasing and we have to be part of the solution with a number of different parties. Good on the City of Yellowknife for taking the lead on this one and we’ll do what we can to support them. Thank you.
Thank you, Mr. McLeod. Final, short supplementary, Mr. Bromley.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. The number of people without a warm, safe place to sleep in Yellowknife is indeed territory-wide and, two, growing daily. The housing crisis in the North is the number one social issue in the North.
Where are we at in implementing a Housing First program? So is the Minister willing to adopt the Housing First approach that addresses the need of our growing homeless population? What’s our plan for moving forward? Mahsi.
The NWT Housing Corporation has a number of programs that are designed to keep people in houses. We’ve got, I believe, 2,400 public housing units across the Northwest Territories and we have a number of third-party units. We have a number of income support clients in some of our public housing. So, we are playing a small part in trying to alleviate the homelessness issue.
Again, it is something that the lead was taken by the City of Yellowknife. We will continue to work with them to provide any assistance we can, but still trying to maintain our social housing issues that we face and trying to improve those as well. Thank you.
