Thank you, Mr. Speaker. My questions today are for the Minister of the NWT Housing Corporation. They follow up on my Member’s statement earlier today.
In October I asked the Minister about some outstanding arrears that individuals in the Public Housing Program have and particularly concerned about the perceived “false” arrears that are out there. The Minister committed to working with the LHOs to have people come in and do reassessments to determine whether in fact their arrears were accurate or not. I was wondering if the Minister could give us a bit of an update on the progress of that.
Thank you, Mr. Abernethy. The honourable Minister responsible for the NWT Housing Corporation, Mr. Robert McLeod.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. We’ve been very encouraged by the number of people that have been coming into the LHOs to get reassessments. The percentages of people that are coming in are improving each time. We have made some progress is writing off what is perceived to be artificial arrears, and as long as they come and verify their income... In one particular case a person came in and verified all their income for a period of that time and left the LHO owing zero arrears. We do note that is helping some people and we’ll continue. Once I get the updated numbers, I’ll provide them to the Members.
That’s, actually, really good news. I’m especially excited to hear the sample provided where the individual went in for the assessment and it turns out they didn’t owe anything.
In the information that the Minister has committed to providing, could he provide us with a bit of a breakdown of some of the results of those assessments? How many are actually showing zero or no arrears and how many are owing what they were told they owed beforehand? A bit of an analysis of what’s owed and what’s not and what the findings are.
That would be a huge undertaking, given the amount of public housing tenants we have across the Northwest Territories. If we have to go on a community-by–community basis, for the most part we have a lot of folks that are in arrears. It would be a huge undertaking. I’ll see what kind of information I can pull together to share with the Members. If there are more examples of people who left the LHO owing a lot less than they originally thought, then I will give that information to the Members. It is a huge undertaking but I will commit to seeing what we’re able to provide.
I know the LHOs are incredibly busy and adding a whole bunch of work may not be good for them, but I think there can be some generalization done as to what the findings are, whether or not people are finding themselves not in arrears.
I was wondering, given the good news that we’ve received, whether the Minister would commit to putting some additional pressure on the LHOs to get out there and do the assessments. I mean, the news is good, right? I mean, we have individuals who don’t owe. Let’s use that information to help encourage more people coming in. I was wondering if I could get the Minister to commit to take that little bit of extra pressure on the LHOs, even though I know they’re doing a lot of work and they’re busy, but to get some more assessments done. I think that the results will be positive. Thank you.
Mr. Speaker, the better news is the LHOs are not going chasing after these people. These folks are actually coming into the LHO office and they are verifying their income and they’re getting reassessments done. People have taken it upon themselves to come into the LHOs, which is really encouraging, and if the LHOs find that there’s somebody that they need to see, well, obviously, they’ll contact them and tell them they need to come in. So the communication is there, but we do have clients that are coming into the LHOs and getting reassessments done and in some cases it’s working out for them. Thank you.
Thank you, Mr. McLeod. Your final, short supplementary, Mr. Abernethy.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Just being really quick, I’m very happy to hear that individuals are coming in, but I’m sure there are still some individuals that are not coming in because they’re uncertain about the process. I think we have some real positive results here and I was just wondering if I could get the Minister to, once again, sort of commit to using the data we have to create some sort of campaign or awareness campaign to suggest to come in, come in and be assessed. I think that the news is positive. I’m happy to hear people are coming in, but let’s try and grab the rest of them and get rid of those arrears where they’re not real. Thank you.
Mr. Speaker, I can commit to doing that. I mean, the word is out there that they need to come and get reassessed. They see it as an opportunity to get their arrears straightened out if they believe that they’ve accumulated during the time it was over at ECE. But I can tell the Member and I can tell this House, actually, that we do have a couple of communities, the preliminary numbers we got when we first did the transfer over back in June, there was one community where, the highest community where, the highest community, I think, was 37 percent of the people still had to come in, which was our highest number. That means 63 percent have come in. Numbers may have improved since then. A community in Tu Nedhe has 1 percent of the tenants have to come in. The numbers are all quite positive. We have three numbers that are fairly high but we’re working on those. Once I get an update as to the number of people that were reassessed, I will pass it on to the Members of this Assembly. Thank you.
Thank you, Mr. McLeod. The honourable Member for Frame Lake, Ms. Bisaro.
