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NUNAVUT - Surveyors will be going door-to-door in Nunavut in March and April to assess how just bad the housing crisis is.

The Nunavut Housing Corporation and the Nunavut Association of Municipalities will hire a person in each community to go to every home and talk to every resident 16 years of age or older. Interviewers will ask people things such as their age, the type of housing they live in and how many people they live with.

"In 2004 it was estimated that 3,000 public housing units were required over a 10-year time span to alleviate the severe overcrowding in our public housing," said Housing Minister Hunter Tootoo in the legislature. "Since 2001 the annual growth and demand for new housing has grown at an estimated pace of over 270 public housing units per year."

Training for the interviewers will take place in Iqaluit, Cambridge Bay or Rankin Inlet. These interviewers will go through a confidential survey with each adult resident of their community regardless of whether they are homeowners, in public housing, couch-surfing or homeless.

Once the surveys are complete, they will go to Statistics Canada, which will use the information to paint a broad picture of housing in Nunavut.

With that, the Government of Nunavut will be able to more accurately gauge the extent of the housing shortage in the territory. That will aid the government as it plans housing projects in the future.

It will also add weight to the GN's position as it applies for housing resources from the federal government.