IQALUIT
Lisa Eetuk Ishulutak feels stranded by the government's welfare system.

She's a land claim beneficiary raised in Iqaluit with a husband, a 22-month-old baby, a high school diploma and an office administration certificate.

Lisa Eetuk Ishulutak wants help but doesn't know where to go. Too poor to rent a house in Iqaluit, but too rich for sufficient social assistance, she feels she's been left in the cold by government policy. - Stewart Burnett/NNSL photo

Without being able to find a reliable babysitter during her 12-hour shifts, Ishulutak quit her full-time job. Then her husband became unemployed, as well.

Now, she can't find the support she needs and can't afford to rent a place on her own.

"I'm not poor enough to get help from income support, but I'm not rich enough to rent a two-bedroom for over $2,500," said Ishulutak, citing the well-known average rent price in the city.

There was no room in the local women's shelter for her, but she's been able to find temporary residence with her family while applying for another job.

"I'm lucky enough to have a place to stay, but what about all the other people who went through what I'm going through?" she asked.

Ishulutak feels like she is speaking for many people in the territory and thinks the welfare system sets people up to fail.

"I know someone who's currently in public housing, and they're scared to make more money," she said.

"Their rent just went up because she was making too much money. If she makes a little bit more, then public housing is going to give her three months' notice to find another place to live."

She wonders why public housing tenants have such a short leash in terms of clawed-back benefits as they try to better themselves.

"It's like the government only wants people on welfare to stay on welfare," she said.

"They want you to pay $60 (for housing) instead of bettering yourself. It's so frustrating."

Some 14,000 people in Nunavut are on some form of income assistance, with a total budget of approximately $40 million per year.

The types of assistance vary, from seniors' fuel subsidies to social housing, but even top bureaucrats agree the system needs changing.

Larry Journal, director of income assistance, said his department is just in the process of completing a territory-wide review of its programs.

"We inherited the program from the NWT, and there have been little changes to it since then," he told Nunavut News/North.

"We want to review and reform the program with the overall goal of making income assistance better, making sure the families and individuals that really require assistance get assistance."

To do that, he's sought feedback from people across the communities, including councils, those on assistance and those not.

Income assistance is supposed to be a program of last resort, but it's grown over the years to fund, in one way or another, roughly 40 per cent of Nunavummiut.

"We've done, I think, a good job of delivering income assistance in the past, but we haven't focused the way we should on getting people off income assistance," said Journal.

To that end, his department, along with the career development division inside it, has teamed up with the Department of Economic Development and Transportation to find ways to propel people off of assistance and help make them self-sustaining.

One idea the government is looking at is raising the amount of money people can earn before assistance is clawed back or exempting certain forms of income from claw backs.

"We want to look at, are there other revenues we should be exempting or exempting portions so it gives them more incentive to save money and actually go out and earn money?" said Journal.

Public housing is geared to income, so the more money someone earns, the more that person will pay toward housing.

"As people are able to get better jobs, yes, they're going to pay more rent, but in the long run they're also going to be taking more money home," said Journal.

One challenge, he said, is the reliability of income assistance compared to the risk the job market offers, with the possibilities of hours being cut, lay offs, closures or otherwise.

"Social assistance is pretty reliable, as long as you do the reporting and do the assessment every month," said Journal. "Based on the assessment, they're going to get a certain amount of money, and that's one of the things that we're also looking at: how can we get people to at least get into the workforce. Our partnership with career development is a really important part of that."

He wants to restructure the welfare system to put a stronger emphasis on education and training, giving people the tools they need to get themselves off assistance.

Admitting the number of people on income assistance has been rising, Journal said he wants to at least see the growth reduced.

"We want to see fewer people on income assistance," he said.

But what he also wants to do is redirect that budget to the people who truly need it.

"There hasn't been anybody that's come to me as director of income assistance and said, 'We're going to cut your budget,'" said Journal. "I haven't heard that. If we're able to get some people off of income assistance to working, that means we can reallocate so that the people who are the most needy, we're actually able to support them better."

Currently, the department is completing a training plan and installing a new case management system to make the program more efficient and allow income assistance workers to spend more time working directly with their clients.

"To get people off income assistance, we want them to pick a productive choice," said Journal. "If that productive choice is training, education or employment, we want our income assistance workers every month to be talking to them about how they're doing...with the goal of moving people along that continuum to getting off income assistance."

Ishulutak's complaints ring familiar with Noah Papatsie, a former city councillor who lives in public housing himself.

"To be honest, I think our social assistance system needs to be fixed," he said.

He spoke in line with Journal's goals, saying people need to be trained for jobs and educated.

"People need to have jobs, especially the people who are on social assistance," he said.

On the sliding scale of claw backs people face with their public housing, Papatsie said it feels like the money is "being ripped out of our own pockets."

"If you do get a job, (the rent) will definitely go higher," he said. "They rate you depending on what you make in a year. By the time the whole month is gone, you're paying more than what you were paying in the first place."

He said there are a lot of people who feel the same way.

"We've been living up here a long time," said Papatsie. "There should be a better way to fix this housing situation."

He said the city is adding 250 people a year who need housing, but the only people who seem to get it are the government workers.

"If we're working together on this, I think everybody can live a happy life," said Papatsie. "But right now, nobody's living a happy life. We're just paying, paying, paying. Everybody's just paying."