GNWT rules blamed for homelessness
Fort Providence businessman says solution for homelessness lies with housing corp
April Hudson
Northern News Services
Thursday, September 15, 2016
DEH GAH GOT'IE KOE/FORT PROVIDENCE
Six to eight per cent of Fort Providence's adult population is in need of housing, according to a new report from businessman Pat Mazerolle.
Pat Mazerolle, left, holds a ticket box for Leonie Lafferty, right, to draw from at a Chase-the-Ace fundraiser in January. In front of them are Gary Fields and Faith Bonnetrouge. So far, the Community Advancement Partnership Society has raised a little more than $10,000. - NNSL file photo
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That includes a family of three evicted for being in arrears, a couple living in a shack seven kilometres out of the community and six adults living in a three-bedroom house.
Mazerolle, who runs FP Management & Consulting in the hamlet, recently released a nine-page report on the housing situation in the community.
Titled Homeless Needs in Fort Providence: a perspective based on local research, the report lays responsibility for the community's homeless population at the feet of the Northwest Territories Housing Corporation.
A spokesperson for the corporation was not available for comment at press time, but Mazerolle said he developed the report through contact with residents in the hamlet, as well as discussions with probation, social and mental health workers, RCMP members and housing authority managers.
By the time the report was released, Mazerolle said he had talked to around 13 people without housing. In the two weeks since the report came out, he has been contacted by three other people in need of housing.
"I want an acknowledgment (from the housing authority) that something has to be done," he said.
The report focuses on the barriers people without homes face when trying to obtain housing through the authority.
Chief among those barriers, he writes in the report, is the difficulty with getting on - and staying on - the authority's waiting list in the first place.
Under legislation, people who are on income assistance must be on the local housing waiting list in order to receive rental support.
"If you owe money to housing, have had issues with housing in the past . you can't even get on the waiting list," Mazerolle said. "Because you can't get on the waiting list . you can't get help."
The solution, he says, is to remove criteria for the waiting list. He said anyone should be allowed on the list, as long as they apply.
"That's all we're looking for. We're just looking to alleviate some of the people who are chronically homeless," he said.
Although he developed the report through his company, Mazerolle has also been working with the Community Advancement Partnership Society, a nonprofit in the hamlet that is actively raising money to build affordable housing in Fort Providence.
In a Sept. 1 letter addressed to Housing Minister Caroline Cochrane and Education, Culture and Employment Minister Alfred Moses, Mazerolle wrote on behalf of the society asking the authority to consider changing its wait-list policy.
"On Aug. 16, I made a presentation to the (authority's) board of directors and requested support to have the local policies amended to allow any resident the opportunity to get on the waiting list," he wrote.
The society has been raising money since December. So far, Mazerolle said, it has gathered a little more than $10,000, although $2,000 of that is already earmarked for someone who is homeless and is building a home.
The hope of the society is to build small units to be used as transitional housing, while helping clients to eventually get a regular housing unit.
Senior Cabinet communications adviser Andrew Livingstone confirmed in an e-mail that both Cochrane's and Moses' offices had both received copies of the report and are in the process of reviewing it. "Given that the report is still being reviewed, it would be premature to comment on any of the specifics," Livingstone stated.
