Thank you, Mr. Speaker. My questions today are addressed to the Minister responsible for the NWT Housing Corporation. I’d like to ask the Minister some questions about the Rent Supplement Program. It’s been about two years now, I think, since the program was put into place. At the time that the Minister advised committee of the program, I do believe that he said there was going to be an evaluation at some point.
So, first of all I’d like to ask the Minister, what kind of success does the Housing Corporation attribute to this program? What kind of uptake has there been from people that are renting? Thank you.
Thank you, Ms. Bisaro. The Minister responsible for the NWT Housing Corporation, Mr. McLeod.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. The program was originally designed to help with subsidies for about 150 clients a year. Since the inception of the program, we’ve had 158 clients go through the program. We currently have 68 clients that are still in the program. Thank you.
Thanks to the Minister. So, if I understood the Minister correctly, that’s 68 or 70 out of a possible 150. That’s unfortunate. I would have hoped that the program would be oversubscribed.
I’d like to ask the Minister, when is the two-year anniversary date of this program and will the Housing Corporation be doing a formal review, a formal evaluation of the program at that time? Thank you.
I’m not sure of the exact date, but we are almost at our two-year anniversary now and we will do an evaluation of the program to see if the program is working as it was intended to. Thank you.
It’s no secret that many people who are renting, struggle to meet the cost of their housing and also meet their daily expenses and maintain any kind of a decent lifestyle. Some people cannot afford to rent their own apartment, their own home. They need to rent a room in a house.
I’d like to know from the Minister, as they do the evaluation of this program that’s gone over the last two years, will they consider expanding the terms of reference to the program to include people who are renting not an apartment but renting a room in a house or renting a room in somebody else’s apartment? Thank you.
That’s something I could commit to the Member that as part of the evaluation we can have a look at that. The program was originally designed to deal with affordability issues, and we’ve seen that in a lot of the market communities. I think their affordability issue was about 86 percent. So, as part of the evaluation, we could look to the issue the Member was raising. Thank you.
Thank you, Mr. McLeod. Final, short supplementary, Ms. Bisaro.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Thanks to the Minister. Yes, affordability in Yellowknife is the major issue in housing and in my community. At this point, I looked at the NWT Housing Corp website. There’s no indication that this program will end.
So I’d like to know from the Minister, it’s been two years, what are the intentions of the Housing Corp? How long will this program continue? Do they intend to continue it and for how long? Thank you.
I don’t think we had a timeline on this. It was a program to help those that are living in market communities that were dealing with an affordability issue. We had originally, I think, budgeted just over $1 million. We’re down to about $900,000 now. I don’t believe we had put a timeline on this. Again, it will be part of the whole evaluation process to see how well the program is working and we’ll take that information as we move forward. Thank you.
Thank you, Mr. McLeod. The Member for Yellowknife Centre, Mr. Hawkins.
