Debates of March 14, 2007 (day 2)

Mahsi, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, today I am going to use my Member’s statement to talk about this government’s policies on the rental arrears kind of spiralling out of control here for the past five to 10 years at the Housing Corporation. I do support all of the initiatives that do assist people to address their outstanding accounts with the Housing Corporation or the local housing organizations, but this government definitely has to make some fundamental changes to the rent scale policies and their eviction processes if they wish to recover any significant amount of the $8 million-plus that is owed to the LHOs and to the Housing Corporation, especially if these people that are living in public housing, if we want to stop them from continuing to slide deeper and deeper into debt, which seems to be the way we are going now.

The first thing that this government has to do is to develop a small communities rent scale policy that is not based on the market rent for Yellowknife and is not adjusted because of the vacancy rates in Yellowknife either, and clearly does not reflect the fair share of real earned income that people are willing to pay for some of the conditions that they have to live under like overcrowding and the large inventory of dilapidated housing that we have in our smaller communities.

Mr. Speaker, every client of the Housing Corporation with outstanding arrears has to be addressed on an individual basis and the methods of repayment customized to each individual circumstance. Mr. Speaker, the people who are stepping up to the plate to pay down their outstanding accounts have to be given the gratitude and consideration that they deserve for doing what they are doing, because it is often very difficult for these people to pay down such large debts, especially when they have large families to support and they are on small incomes or they might be on income support.

I have constituents who have made significant sacrifices to pay down their debt, Mr. Speaker. But then, again, they are not given due consideration for better housing or even housing programs because of their so-called bad credit that they had with the Housing Corporation or the LHO. But these are the people who should be accommodated and properly housed, because they have obviously shown us that they can assume the responsibility of keeping current with the rent and may be the better clients with the lesser risks to taking on homeownership, which, I believe, is what this government is working towards and we should continue to do that. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

---Applause