Caroline Cochrane

Currently, actually, the Housing Corporation does have some market housing. One of the reasons is that within the communities it's hard to find housing for professionals such as teachers, nurses, et cetera, RCMP as well. So yes, it will be a revenue base that we can actually use towards maintaining of our social housing.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. The federal government is actually getting out of the provision of housing for RCMP officers effective April 1, so we don't have a lot of time to work on this. Their reasoning is that they don't want to do the retrofitting to the current housing that they're in. The NWT Housing Corporation is not looking at taking on their current housing, but providing services to the RCMP. Because of economy of scale, it's easier for us to provide all of the housing versus having to have them negotiate individually with market housing before April 1st. Thank you.

As stated earlier, the initiative is not to displace public housing. It is a revenue source to be able to supplement the public housing. I also can give you some information on the federal units that the RCMP had. At this point, the federal government is saying that they’re beyond repair for them to make them financially viable. They will be offering them out to market. If they are not taken up by the market within the communities, then they’ll send them to negotiations with the Housing Corporation.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. As previously stated in my answers, the benefit of the Housing Corporation taking on this initiative is that we will retain RCMP officers within the communities and we can use the market rent that we will be charging them to subsidize the operating maintenance costs to the public housing considering that the CMHC funding will be dissolving. Thank you.

I am more than interested in visiting the communities and the regions. I would, however, have to have a date, so I could check my schedule. If available, I would be pleased.

At this point, no, we don’t know what their plans are, but we can inquire and we can get back to the Member on that.

The priority for the RCMP housing would be non-market communities where there are no landlords that provide it. Those would be the first ones that we would be looking at.

Currently, it costs about $18,000 to $20,000 a year to provide the operating and maintenance provision for public housing. For every unit that we rent out, we would be able to support that cost.

If the Member would like to meet with me any time this week, then we would coordinate our schedules and see what times works good for both of us.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. The department is actually, at this point, compiling a listing of all of the housing that we have available. Right now, we have no housing available for public housing. Just to let people know, the buildings that people see boarded up are scheduled for demolition, it’s expensive to do that, or else they are public houses owned by the community members, but we can provide a list of those houses that the corporation owns that are empty. Thank you.