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NORTHWEST TERRITORIES
News/North spoke with the newly appointed president of the NWT Housing Corporation to see how his first two months on the job have gone.

Stewart shared his ideas on issues such as arrears, the shelter policy review process and future plans the corporation has to help elevate the pressures of housing in smaller communities.

News/North: How has it been since you took over the president's position?

Stewart: It's been good actually. I've had the chance to go out and meet with all of the district offices. Certainly the passion of the employees in terms of helping residents that their shelter needs comes through loud and clear. The shelter policy review that we've been undertaking, it's really provided a good opportunity for us to look at ways we've done things in the past and see where we can make some improvements. I'm really excited about the opportunity as well as the chances I think are going to be happening over the next several months.

News/North: Are there distinct challenges, and how are you planning on tackling them?

Stewart: When you look at the engagement that we did on the shelter policy and looking at the way housing is taking place there are a lot of challenges with shelters and everybody recognizes that. It probably starts with some of the issues around public housing and we certainly got a strong message that we need to look at the way we do our rent scales. A pretty common theme is they need to be simpler and that it's a major issue. So we're looking at a number of alternatives and that will be coming up in some proposals pretty quick in terms of how we can change the rent scales and make them fair and also to ensure that we're not having anything in our own way in doing business that provides that disincentive to work, and that people have an opportunity while meeting their shelter needs to also to improve their overall well-being.

News/North: How are you planning on handling the issue of unpaid rents?

Stewart: Arrears have always been a challenge. It's really a balancing act to make sure that we are providing every opportunity for clients, whether they are homeownership clients or people that are in public housing, to work with their housing office whether its the LHO (local housing authority) or a district office to get into a repayment plan. I think there's been a lot of flexibility in the past and I think that it's a good thing - to work with people and to get them on a path where they can pay down their arrears and keep themselves in good standing. The moratorium that the minister announced back in December is really an opportunity to hold off on that final step of evictions. The hope is that those folks that were near then end of the process would really have an opportunity to work with the LHO and get themselves back on a path that will help them pay their arrears and stay in their public housing unit and we're hopeful that people will do that.

News/North: Do you have any clear goal for the year?

Stewart: I think you'll see in the next several months the result of the review that we've done that will be made public. There's a variety of activities out of the shelter policy review, changes that will be proposed and some additional activities that we will be looking at and I think that's going to be the focus. As well, we are ensuring that the operations that we are doing on a day-to-day basis will carry on. There's been an incredible amount of investment over the last five or six years in housing. And while that's been great - I think something like $200 million has been spent on housing - there needs to be a breather now and those houses are being used to their greatest ability.

News/North: You won't be building anymore new units (this year)?

Stewart: We're still going to be building. We were able to get a significant investment through the Economic Action Plan, so (now) we're returning back to our historical levels of capital investment. In the last few years (with) Economic Action Plan money - and we were, I believe, the only jurisdiction in Canada that matched the federal government's contribution - we were able to put somewhere in the area of 500 units on the ground. I think that's really helped elevate some of the supply issues and the quality issues that were out there before, but we'll return to our historical investment levels. (The Economic Action Plan) was a huge benefit to the territory and I think we've really seen the advantages of that.

News/North: The needs in Yellowknife are different than smaller communities, have you outlined a strategy for identifying the issues in different jurisdictions?

Stewart: It really is quite different, that's one of the messages that came out loud and clear in the shelter policy review. We have to look at the way we deal with housing in small communities in a different way than we do in the market community, which includes Yellowknife, but also Hay River and Fort Smith and Fort Simpson. But we have to look at a way to approach these things. Home ownership in a small community means something different than it means in a larger community. A larger community, the investment and the value tends to increase over time and so there's a different motivation for being homeowners. I think when we look at our smaller communities we have to look at how do we support home ownership there and how do we treat housing there. The other reality in our non-market communities is that public housing is a much larger portion of the stock and then there's other challenges like availability of housing for teachers and other things that you don't see in the larger communities.

So I think what we're going to try and do with the shelter policy review and the actions that come out of that is recognize those differences and have different actions that might take place in the smaller communities than what would take place in some of the larger communities.

News/North: If you could address the communities what would you say about what will be happening in the coming year?

Stewart: I think they should stay tuned in terms of some of the changes that will be coming out of the shelter policy review. I suspect that we will be launching a new effort in terms of the rent scales that will help address most of the concerns that we heard over the last year when we were doing the review and engaging the communities that will be a major shift in the way we've done business in the past. But I think there will be a number of other areas that they should be watching for in terms of some of the challenges that are out there, whether that's in the way we do our homeownership programs including repairs, but also things like teacher housing and housing for other professionals in the communities.

I would encourage them to stay tuned because of those (review) results - we've certainly valued the input we got and I think we're going to be laying out some actions that will help address some of those problems that they identified for us.

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