Yellowknife (July 28/06) - When Susan Fusco applied for subsidized housing, she was asked if she had any children. When the Yellowknife resident said she had a grown daughter living on her own, a housing official wondered if she would be having another baby any time soon.

April Alexander, housing advocate at the Centre for Northern Families, says that the social housing system discriminates against singles. - Emily Watkins/NNSL photo

"If I did I was told that I would be bumped further up the list," says Fusco, whose daughter is 25.

"I was really shocked that they would say such a thing to me."

Fusco's situation is not unique, according to one housing advocate who believes the transitional housing system discriminates against single women.

"It screens out an entire sector based on marital status," says April Alexander, housing advocate at the Centre for Northern Families, a Yellowknife shelter.

"It discriminates and violates basic human rights."

As a result, singles often end up living in poverty or on the streets, Alexander says.

"The system needs to be fair."

Fusco, who has worked for 35 years, depleted her savings after the untimely death of her mother. When her contract as a senior officer at a Yellowknife company expired, she could not afforded to renew her lease and lost her apartment.

"I was earning very decent wages," Fusco says.

"And I can continue to earn decent wages, but I just needed something transitional until I secure that next position."

Renters in transitional housing pay below-market rates, though the arrangement is usually short-term.

"I was not asking for a handout. I was asking for a helping hand - I was stuck without a home in a city where housing prices are expensive."

The result: door after door was shut in her face, she says.

Since then, she has been couch jumping from house to house belonging to friends as she looks for an appropriate position.

Her main concern has not been for herself so much as the thought of what the screening process would do to a young girl without support and education.

As a mother of an adult daughter, she would be "furious" if her child was asked about having a baby.

"I would... probably call up my MLA and do everything within my power to protect her," she says.

Jeff Anderson, chief financial officer for the NWT Housing Corporation, says that there are a lot of people without homes in Yellowknife and the NWT.

"The priority at the moment is families, seniors and the disabled," Anderson says.

Singles are at the very bottom of the list and there are no current plans to build a transition house for them. That could be a possibility in the future, Anderson says.

"We are open to look at almost any innovative idea. In the meantime, single people can rent a basement suite."

In order to determine the priorities for the housing corporation, surveys are conducted every few years.

"We target our resources to the results of the surveys to those in the most need," he says.

"We are already looking into smaller dwellings of 1-2 bedrooms."

There will be over 60 new transitional spaces built in Yellowknife this year, none of which are slated for singles.

While there are no statistics on the number of singles without transitional housing, advocates believe the numbers are high.