Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, earlier I spoke about the challenges of housing faced by the residents of the Northwest Territories and so did many of my colleagues. My questions, of course, are for the Minister of the NWT Housing Corporation. Mr. Speaker, in its 2008 audit of the NWT Housing Corporation, the Auditor General said, “we believe that good planning and relevant performance measures will assist the corporation to identify and address its challenges, engage the corporation’s progress in meeting the housing needs of all Northwest Territories residents.” Can the Minister explain: what are the key components of the department’s approach currently to improving housing in the NWT? Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
Masi. Minister of NWT Housing Corporation.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. The key component to addressing housing within the NWT at this point for the NWT Housing Corporation is to utilize the community survey that we will be sending out to identify the needs within each community and developing our plan based on each community’s identified priorities. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
Thank you to the Minister for her reply. Mr. Speaker, is the department’s work on improving housing still being guided by its April 2012 strategic framework document?
At this point, the strategic plan is actually expired, so we’re looking to do the new plan and then of course the surveys will be utilized to develop our new plan.
Mr. Speaker, what is the department doing to work with communities to make sure land is accessible for developing more housing?
The NWT Housing Corporation land section works a year in advance to identify the land needs for the following year’s projects. One of the strategies we also use is the buildings that need to be demolished. We consider that when we’re looking at new buildings, and so often we’ll take out a unit to put in a new unit within that, on that land.
Oral questions. Member for Yellowknife North.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Thank you to the Minister for her reply. Lastly, Mr. Speaker, what is the department doing to reduce dependence on public housing and to promote independent home ownership, particularly in the non-market communities? Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
We do have a program currently, called the PATH program that is providing assistance to territorial homeownership programs, that people can actually purchase homes within the communities. There’s different rates depending on the community. We do an assessment of the building, based on the community and then the… I mean, sometimes actually the units are actually given just for the land costs. We’re revisiting that as well because we do recognize that very soon the operating and maintenance money, CMHC funding, will be expiring. We need to come up with a plan. We’re kind of looking at ideas around more home ownership programs and just seeing if we can work within the different communities to help them to give them the infrastructure so that they can take more ownership upon their own.
Oral questions. Member for Kam Lake.
