Derek Neary
Northern News Services

Fort Providence (May 30/03) - While many students and staff eagerly anticipate summer break, teacher Christopher Carson has a foreboding feeling about the fall.

Carson has had no success in lining up a place to live for the next school year. He, his common-law spouse and his daughter are currently residing in a mobile home belonging to the Pentecostal Church. However, a new pastor is due to move in sometime in July, displacing them.

His family is second on the waiting list through the Deh Gah Got'ie First Nation's economic development arm, which rents houses. The Housing Association isn't an option as it won't rent to higher-income families.

"There's nothing here," Carson said. "You have to worry about where you're going to live."

Dan Daniels, assistant deputy minister for the Department of Education, said his department attempts to work co-operatively with the NWT Housing Corporation and the Financial Management Board Secretariat to assist teachers facing desperate housing circumstances.

"We'll see if there's some potential solutions that might be found ... to see if there's any type of housing that might be freed up," Daniels said.

Carson noted the only dwellings currently vacant in Fort Providence are dilapidated ones.

Housing crunches have cropped up periodically in various communities, Daniels acknowledged.

"Usually a solution does get worked out," he said. "The community might own a home that they're willing to rent out or some other housing arrangements get worked out."

Upon arriving in Fort Providence last year, Carson and his family stayed with other residents who were willing to take them in until the end of September.

While teaching in Deline, he said, he never had a worry about housing because there's a government-leased triplex designated for teachers. Nothing of the sort exists in Fort Providence.

Daniels explained that the government stopped providing housing for teachers in most NWT communities several years ago to encourage home ownership.

Houses that remain property of the Department of Education haven't yet fetched an acceptable offer, he noted.

Carson said he'd like to see the government offer home ownership incentives to teachers such as rent-to-own programs or interest-free mortgages.