Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I have a few more questions for the Minister responsible for the Housing Corporation. I was interested to hear him tell my colleague, Mr. Beaulieu, that the Housing Corporation had divested of 183 units in the last three years. Could the Minister tell us, even in general terms, how many of those units were sold to homeowners and how many of them were demolished? Thank you.
Thank you. Minister responsible for the Northwest Territories Housing Corporation.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I will have to get back to the Member on the detail. I did mention that, since April 1, 2016, there have been 183 units that we have demolished or sold. The detail that I can give the Member at this moment is that, during 2018-2019, we did sell 20 units and we demolished 20 more.
We are still continuing to work with communities and working with our residents in terms of findings ways that we can get them into a home ownership program or a lease-to-own program. I can get that detail from the Housing Corporation, and I will share it with the Member. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
I appreciate the detail that the Minister was able to provide. I think that he would agree with the statement that, with a waiting list of over 900 households, bringing more 20 more units into circulation, while is some progress, is clearly not enough progress.
Consistently, there has been a low uptake on housing for several reasons. A new one that I learned about at the Housing Summit is the high cost of insurance. Apparently, insurance companies are reluctant to insure homes in communities without fire departments and/or hydrants. My question for the Minister, then: is there anything that the Housing Corporation can do to help potential homeowners with the cost of insurance?
As I mentioned, I was really appreciative that standing committee was able to attend the Housing Summit in Inuvik and listen to some of the concerns that were brought up, whether it was by industry, whether it was by leadership, or whether it was by non-government organizations. We do know that accessing home insurance can be challenging and very costly in some of our communities. However, I would just like Members, residents, and our groups to know that insurance costs are established by insurance providers, and we do not have the ability to adjust those rates, Mr. Speaker.
However, as noted in Inuvik, we will do some thorough research and look at the options that might be available to us and the resulting financial costs moving forward.
I recognize that insurance rates are set by the insurance industry, but one possibility that I would like to bring to the Minister's attention is a self-insurance scheme, where the insurance is provided by the Government of the Northwest Territories to the homeowners so that it is more affordable to them and it meets the goal of moving people who can afford to get out of public housing out of public housing.
As I mentioned in the last answer, we are going to look at and do some research on the options that would be available. Once we look at those options and do the research, we would share it with standing committee, and we would share it with Members.
Thank you. Oral questions. Member for Yellowknife Centre.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Once again, I hope that the research will include a self-insurance option. Could the Minister tell us when we could see the results of this research? When does he plan to have that completed? Thank you.
At this time, I don't have a timeline. Coming out of the Housing Summit, we are developing a report that we are going to share with our leadership, that we are going to share with our stakeholders, and that we are going to work with people who came to the Housing Summit. That is a priority, everything that came out of the Housing Summit, where we had leaders from 24 of our communities across the Northwest Territories. We want to make sure that we know what the next steps are. At this moment, we don't have a timeline, but we will look into that research. That is something that we are committed to, but our staff also needs to work on developing the programs and promote the programs.
As I mentioned, we had six community housing plans as a goal, and now we have 10 communities that we are working with. After the summit, I am sure that we are going to be expecting more communities come and reach out to the Housing Corporation to do more work. Once we get that information, we will share it with standing committee and Members, but right now, I don't have a timeline. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
