SOMBA K'E/YELLOWKNIFE - The Northland Trailer Park may be "potentially uninhabitable" if the city doesn't help residents pay the estimated $92,000 each per unit for utility upgrades, according to the vice-president of the park's condominium board of directors.

Wade Friesen, vice president of the Yellowknife Condominium Corporation No. 8, stands on Norseman Drive in Northland Trailer Park. - Charlotte Hilling/NNSL photo

"This is essentially people paying for a house twice," said Wade Friesen.

"This is not something anyone in Northland can afford." said Friesen.

He said the average home assessment in Northland is $98,000 per home.

"Doubling the mortgage, as you can imagine, will be very difficult," he said. "I can easily foresee many single parents and fixed income families and any other homeowners who are unable to afford this turning to social assistance, or subsidized housing or other government-based programs as a solution."

Friesen made a presentation to the city's Priorities, Policies and Budget committee on Monday.

He was asking the city for financial support and help lobbying other levels of government for funding.

City hall put two recommendations forward - one to provide assistance and technical support to the condo corporation, and another to authorize a review of financing options to pay for the upgrades.

There are 258 units in Northland. The private development is home to around 1,100 people, or five per cent of Yellowknife's population.

Friesen said residents won't be able to shoulder the cost of upgrades to the water, sewer and transportation infrastructure. He called the necessary upgrades urgent and said the infrastructure is 15 years past its life expectancy - which was put at 25 years when the land was developed in 1970-1971.

The estimated work will cost around $18 million, Friesen told the committee. This would mean about $500 per month, or $92,000 per household over a 15-year period. The city reported this number to be $82,000 per unit, and between $12 and $20 million overall.

Friesen estimated at least 50 per cent of residents wouldn't be able to pay for the condo fee increases if the project didn't get financial help from other organizations.

Friesen and fellow Northland resident, Pearl Benyk, said it would be impossible to get residents to agree to the huge condo fee increase but they can't wait to make the upgrades.

"The underlying problem is that there really isn't a basic understanding of what our status is, what it means to live in a condominium," said Benyk. "There are many people that think this is part of the city and the city needs to fix it. They don't internalize that this is their land, that they're responsible for it."

She said the board has been trying to change fees since 1990, but people expressed outrage when there was a proposed fee hike of $10 per month.

"Ideally what we'd like to do is turn the whole thing over to the city, and we would no longer have a condo corp, and then everything would be transfered over to a local improvement tax," said Friesen, in a recent interview.

Carl Bird, the city's director of corporate services, agreed that might be the easiest route when asked by Yellowknifer in the weeks leading up to the proposal to council.

"In order for us to actually go in and do the work, and actually monitor and maintain it in the future we would need to be taking over at least the common areas - the roadways, the sidewalks and all that. So unless we obtain the ownership of all those we can't proceed anyway," he said.

At the committee meeting on Monday, councillors discussed the feasibility of covering some of the expenses. City councillor David Wind said the city would have its work cut out for it convincing other branches of government to contribute, but it was a necessary step.

"If infrastructure fails, it's not just a problem for the residents of Northland, it's a problem for the municipal government and it's a problem for the territorial government, said Wind. "And probably the federal government."

Coun. Shelagh Montgomery said she supports the two recommendations but asked whether it would be possible to hold a plebiscite to see if Yellowknife residents would be willing to assume some of the infrastructure costs.

- with files from Charlotte Hilling