.

Home page

Text size

E-mail this page

SOMBA K'E/YELLOWKNIFE - Regular MLAs gave cabinet 120 days to review the public housing subsidy they say needs to be changed to improve delivery.

The motion asks for the full responsibility of the administration of the Public Housing Rental Subsidy Program once again be placed under the control of the local housing organizations, four years after the program delivery was transferred under the umbrella of the Department of Education, Culture and Employment in 2005.

Nine MLAs voted in favour of the motion. Robert Hawkins, MLA for Yellowknife Centre, was the lone opposition and cabinet abstained.

Brought forward by Jane Groenewegen and seconded by Nahendeh MLA Kevin Menicoche, the backbenchers were all of the opinion the current delivery of the system wasn't working and they needed to revert back to the pre-2005 administrative system where Housing delivered the subsidy.

"The idea is premised on the fact that everybody who requires social housing or the services of the housing authority are income support clients and that is absolutely wrong," Groenewegen said, she recognized the previous governments' rational that delivery of all subsidy programs under one roof would make for better administration.

Groenewegen added not all residents using housing were income support clients and forcing hard-working people trying to make ends meet to deal with income support, subjected to the scrutiny of their assessment.

"They had to be the clients of the local housing authority. They had to live in social housing because there just wasn't any option for them.

That didn't mean that they were not hard-working, trying-to-make-ends-meet people," she said, adding people take pride in being able to provide for their families or be financially stable and this subsidy being delivered through income support is depriving people of that same pride.

David Krutko, MLA Mackenzie-Delta, said a transition period when someone was between jobs used to exist but is no longer there.

Krutko also said due to this current system, people in small communities aren't willing to work for fear of having their rent increase when they start collecting wages, pointing to a businessman in Aklavik unable to hire staff because of this.

"They refuse to work because they know that as soon as they go to work their rent is going to go through the roof because they're going to start paying economic rent," he said.

"It's at a point where it's affecting not only the social well-being of the community but the economic viability of our communities because of the way the system is now in place."

Michael McLeod, Minister responsible for the NWT Housing Corporation (NWTHC), said the motion puts obvious urgency on a situation they want to improve on.

"We want to do a number of things in the next while with housing and we've been talking with ECE to do an assessment to see how the program is being delivered and how effective it was," he said. "Now that the members have voted to request us to look at it, it reinforces the need for us to do that."

Wendy Bisaro, MLA Frame Lake, said income supports' lack of understanding about the needs of housing clients is creating hardship for those who need the housing subsidy.

"One of these things that these two different attitudes creates when you have two offices looking at things differently, it creates problems and it creates confusion for people," she said. "They don't understand the problem."

McLeod said the NWTHC plans to work together with Education, Culture and Employment to have an independent assessment done on the program delivery and plan to have something to go back to the regular MLAs with by early May. "The new applications are being gathered and assessed right now and local housing organizations are planning on making announcements in April or early may as to who qualifies," he said. "We want any changes we make to be applicable to this years allocations."

MLA Robert Hawkins opposed the vote because he supports the system and the goals of the one-stop subsidy idea, but said changing back to the old way isn't the answer and fixing the current problems with the program would be a better approach.