Thank you, Mr. Speaker. In a similar vein as my colleague Mr. Yakeleya, I have concerns about the Housing Corporation on how they do view this particular problem and deal with arrears, whether they’re rentals or, certainly, mortgage arrears.
In my Member’s statement today I talked about 76 percent is the collection rate at housing LHOs across the board, that is, to be honest and fair of course, and they need 90 percent in order to break even. Of course, housing arrears under the context of mortgages are at 40 percent. If you add those two stacks of arrears up, that’s about $26 million in arrears.
The Minister just talked about all these avenues to address these types of problems. What is the Minister of the Housing Corporation presenting as an avenue to pay for these types of arrears, and to ensure that people are complying with their arrears and catching up and getting rid of them? What is this Minister actually doing to close a particular file?
Thank you, Mr. Hawkins. The honourable Minister responsible for the NWT Housing Corporation, Mr. Robert McLeod.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. We did recognize, as this whole Assembly did, that this was quite an issue. We’ve come up with a plan to assist our tenants, whether it be public housing or mortgage homeowners, we’ve come up with a plan to help them deal with their arrears. There’s a repayment plan that they can enter into with their local housing authority where they pay so much a month on top of the rent that they’ve been assessed.
Our collection rate as of March 31, 2011, was at 79 percent, which is an improvement. A lot of the local LHOs, I think we have a high of 161 percent. That indicates to me that we have folks that are starting to come in and put more money on their rent and arrears. We have five or six of our LHOs that the collection rate is actually over 100 percent. We’re seeing a lot of improvement. It’s still a work in progress. It’s always encouraging to see tenants starting to step up to the plate and accepting the responsibility that they signed on for.
I think the Minister answered the question, I’d say, quite thoroughly. I want to give him credit for that particular answer. I think that’s only fair.
I would disagree with him on the context of blanketing tenant collection on rents at 161 percent, because I think what that does is present the House with a false number. What I mean by that is, I’m not saying that the Minister is misleading the House, what I’m saying is...
---Interjection
No, no, that’s not what I’m saying. I’m saying it should be clearly stating that rent is coming in at whatever capacity, and separate it from the arrears. Because what it does is give you a blanket number, so we don’t know who’s paying the rent on time and we don’t know who’s paying the arrears on time. That’s ultimately the goal on this particular issue. I want to make sure, the 161 percent sounds good but we don’t really know what 161 percent means in the bigger context.
I want to give credit for the Minister’s previous answer, and what I’d like to ask him in this particular case, then, is: is the Minister willing to table the action plan that they developed in order to address this particular problem? As well, will he be able to table the results of these types of collections and individual payment schedules provided by each LHO to show us what’s actually being done?
I think, I believe, I have shared with committee our plan on dealing with the arrears situation.
As far as the 161 percent, we obviously know that all the tenants that were assessed paid their rent on time, and then the other 61 percent probably put the money onto their arrears. I mean, we have a pretty good idea in every LHO across the territory who’s paying what. I’m able to see that sometimes, so we know all the tenants that have entered into repayment plans and we know which ones have honoured their repayment plans. We know which ones paid rent the last time, six months ago. We have all that information and we continue to use that information to try to work closely with the tenants to make them realize they made a commitment to enter into a repayment plan and it would be to their benefit to honour it.
Thank you, Mr. McLeod. Final supplementary, Mr. Hawkins.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I slightly disagree, because we don’t actually know that 100 percent of people paid their rent. Now he’s said that 161 percent are paying, we’re getting 161 percent back. Whether that includes the rent and arrears, we don’t know that breakdown, and that’s the type of information that I think would be helpful for all Members specifically targeted to each LHO.
Mr. Speaker, the other issues I raised in my Member’s statement was distributing fairly the annual income for a particular tenant and their family to take out some of the spikes and certainly the drops in both their income and, of course, the way we assess their actual rent. So then a tenant assessment would be more stabilized and, therefore, maybe avoid some of these where they are not paying rent properly in one month and then all of a sudden they’re trying to catch up. Then we always hear the argument of they want to quit their job because they don’t want to pay a high rent that month. If we equalize it over 12 months, that would make a lot more sense. How does the Minister feel about that type of proposal? It would be a lot less work for the tenant as well as the LHO office assessing people. Thank you.
Mr. Speaker, I would have to have discussions with the LHOs to truly see if it’s less work for them. They would prefer that their tenants come in on a month-to-month basis, because you have tenants that may be working for three months and then for the other two or three months they may not work, they may get a job for a month. That’s the reason they come and ask them for month-to-month assessments, so they can assess their rent based on their income for the past month. I think that’s a situation that has worked well.
As far as equalizing it over 12 months, do we collect at the end of 12 months? The beginning of 12 months? I’d like to hear the Member’s suggestion on that. We feel that the avenue that we’re using now is one that works quite well. I would have to have a discussion with the LHOs to see if the Member’s proposal has any merit and if it’s one that they feel would work for them, because at the end of the day, they’re our people on the ground delivering the program. Thank you.
Thank you, Mr. McLeod. Your final, short supplementary, Mr. Hawkins.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I’m sort of hearing a comment for consideration here from the Minister and I want to take advantage of that opportunity by saying would the Minister be willing to assess this particular proposal, because I think it would provide a lot less work to clients, provide a stable environment for them in the sense of payment schedules, as well as be less work for the LHOs to manage once a year to re-evaluate the whole line. No different than when you’re taxed. I mean, you’re not taxed one month by CRA, high one month and then not the next. I mean, it’s a formula base. Let’s take the context of a formula base that you treat income as a big bracket over a year when you do it. Mr. Speaker, would the Minister be willing to assess this concept and do some analysis as to maybe the housing LHOs would like to do this from a different type of strategy point of view?
Mr. Speaker, this is a completely different environment we work in and we have to adapt to the environment we’re in and do whatever would work well for tenants. We’re doing the Shelter Policy review right now. The rent scale review is a part of that and I briefed committee the other day on when we expect to come forward with some preliminary information on the rent scale review as well the housing choices evaluation. But we’re always willing to listen. We’ve had Members in the committee meetings give us some good feedback on what they would like to see us improving and what they would like to see us doing, so we’re always open to suggestions from Members. Thank you.
Thank you, Mr. McLeod. The honourable Member for Kam Lake, Mr. Ramsay.
