Thank you, Mr. Speaker. My Member’s statement today was about housing conditions in the Northwest Territories, especially the community of Paulatuk. What are the plans for dealing with families who are evicted and at risk of eviction in Nunakput communities? What can the Minister tell me that we can tell these people, where they have nowhere to go?
Thank you, Mr. Jacobson. The honourable Minister responsible for the NWT Housing Corporation, Mr. Robert McLeod.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. We’ve been working hard with the residents of the Paulatuk Housing Authority to try to keep them in their units. There are a few examples of tenancies that began five years ago where arrears started accumulating almost immediately. Twenty letters were sent out. Agreements to pay were signed in 2009 that were never honoured. Of 39 that were signed, only one has been honoured. So we’ve been working hard with the community of Paulatuk to try to keep them in their units. In a lot of cases they don’t communicate with the LHO, and that’s part of the problem. Thank you.
Will the Minister make sure that housing authorities review the situation, and for each and every family who are in arrears to recalculate to reflect the reality on the charge? Is it the LHO’s job to go and do home visits as well?
We have done a lot of reassessments all across the Northwest Territories. I think there’s still one community that we have to work on. But I can assure the Member that a lot of the arrears that were accumulated during the transfer have now been adjusted and there’s been quite an adjustment.
Again, this is causing the LHO, it’s affecting their ability to do their job, too, or pay their bills without collecting any kind of revenue. A perfect example is a recent $660,000 bill that they had with the Hamlet of Paulatuk that they had difficulty paying because they just weren’t generating any type of revenues. So it affects the operations all around.
Will the Minister ensure that the families get help in reaching their agreements, and deal with the actual arrears, and direct staff to help the people, the taxpayers and the people that they’re serving and stuff? That’s who they work for, as well, as part of this government.
That’s a very good point, because the taxpayers like to see that their tax dollars are well spent. They are trying to provide a service to a lot of people in low-income housing and we need those people to work with us, otherwise it’s never going to work, and this is one of those cases.
We need to find a solution for this. As badly as it’s gotten, maybe part of it is because the LHO did not condition them early enough in the life of the Paulatuk Housing Authority to have to pay rent. If you look at some of our better performing communities, we have communities where they’re collecting 100 percent of assessed rent, and we have communities at 99 percent. We have no trouble from those communities because they were conditioned early on that housing is a benefit and is something they should be proud of and pay the rent, and a lot of these communities have bought into that. I’d love to name these communities just to make everybody else aware of the good work that’s being done in the communities. The smaller communities are some of the ones that are our best performing LHOs. Thank you.
Thank you, Mr. McLeod. Your final, short supplementary, Mr. Jacobson.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. It’s good to hear that we’ve been through this -- myself and you, Mr. Minister -- in regard to this issue in regard to the payback for the community. I know there are some good, outstanding communities that aren’t paying their rent, but most of those communities are doing good jobs.
We’re talking about a community of probably about 300 people, 276 people. Minimal jobs – government – that’s the only thing they’re relying on. Can the Minister turn over the funding and responsibility to the local hamlet so they can run it?
It’s not a question of how many jobs are in the community, but in some of the communities where people are working, they’re paying their fair share of rent and that’s understandable. But if you look at how the Housing Corporation operates, adjustments are made. If you’re not employed, you pay $32 a month. If it costs $2,000 a month to maintain the unit, the other $1,968 is subsidized by taxpayers in the NWT. We have 67 percent of 2,400 public housing clients in the Northwest Territories paying $32 or less; we have 798 clients across the Northwest Territories paying zero. So we work with the communities, and if they’re employed, they pay according to the money they make. If they’re unemployed, then rent is adjusted.
I did commit to the Member yesterday that we’d be more than willing to sit down with the community to see if they are serious about taking over the provision of housing, and make them well aware of all the challenges that they will be faced having to collect arrears from their own citizens. Thank you.
Thank you, Mr. McLeod. The honourable Member for Sahtu, Mr. Yakeleya.
