Marci, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, I would like to ask the Minister responsible for the NWT Housing Corporation if the policy of the Housing Corporation is to house as many people as possible with their social housing inventory? Thank you.
Masi. Minister responsible for Northwest Territories Housing Corporation.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. No, the policy is not to simply house as many people as possible. The reality is that we need to house people adequately and appropriately and consider their safety. I am not going to cram people into buildings without considering all of the safety needs. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
What I am asking the Minister is, all things being equal, there is a unit available and it can house the people on the waiting list. Let's say there was an incident where there is one individual who is looking for houses on the list, and then there is a family that is on the list. Let's say a single parent with three kids. If that was the case, is the Housing Corporation's policy to try to take care of the individual that has the larger family?
The deciding of the wait list is a little bit more complicated than deciding if you have children or not. There are a lot of factors that go into that, such as what is your current living situation, are you in harm's way at this point. Number of children do count in that, but there are a lot of other factors besides just whether you have children or not.
Would the Minister agree that if an individual family was homeless and that the only thing preventing the Northwest Territories Housing Corporation from allocating a unit to that homeless family was a policy that could easily be adjusted, would the Minister adjust that policy?
It is well known within the Legislative Assembly that I am in the process of reviewing every single policy and program with the Housing Corporation. There are many that I think inhibit people from obtaining, maintaining, retaining their homes. I will be restructuring all policies with that goal in mind to house people.
Masi. Oral questions. Member for Tu Nedhe-Wiilideh.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, if the homeless people are only waiting for a policy adjustment, I would like to ask the Minister: how long will these people remain homeless while the Minister is working on adjusting the policy? Thank you.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. It is really hard to determine how long somebody will remain homeless. At the same time, while we are looking at the policy and the program review, we are trying to address homelessness through a variety of ways. We have put money into the Housing First project in Yellowknife. We are building semi-independent rooms within the current shelters. We are building units within the communities. We are working on homelessness at the same time there is the policy review.
