Iqaluit (Feb 13/06) - Fed up with couch surfing, living in a tent and finally living in a car in the dead of an Iqaluit winter, Pudloo Chouinard staged a protest to demand more housing in the Arctic.

On Feb. 6, a group of about 50 people without permanent addresses marched from Iqaluit's NorthMart down the street and back, with Pudloo leading the pack, yelling: "More housing now!"

This hit home for Lena Totalik, who paused during the protest to tell her story.

"I was homeless for four years here," she said. "It was hard. Trying to find places to stay, trying to find places to eat."

While telling her story, Totalik couldn't help shedding a few tears.

She waited for many years before finally getting an apartment through social housing on Nov. 25, 2005. Before then, finding a place to lay her head at night was a constant struggle.

"I would stay in a tent from April to September, and when it started getting cold I would stay with my friends Pituilee Qulitalik, Lorna Arnatsiaq and Mika Arreak."

Sick of it, she turned to CBC Radio to demand change.

"I've been complaining on CBC Radio that the GN should build houses before somebody freezes."

Totalik says she knows of more than one homeless person who has resorted to sleeping outside in December, and she knows at least 10 men and 10 women who are homeless now.

"But the men have the men's shelter and we have nothing."

The Qimaavik Women's Shelter is primarily a safe place for abused women to go, but they have to leave after six weeks.

"After that, we have nowhere else to go."

Representatives from the Nunavut Housing Corporation were at the protest, handing on information sheets on the housing situation.

The sheets stated that 3,000 public housing units are needed now to put Nunavut on par with the rest of Canada.

But the GN says it just doesn't have the money even to begin addressing the problem.

The corporation and Nunavut Tunngavik Inc. are seeking a partnership with the federal government to address the crisis.