Housing in Nunavik: always a waiting game

Nunavik’s Kativik Municipal Housing Bureau continues to wait on funding commitments from both the provincial and federal governments. (PHOTO BY SARAH ROGERS)

KUUJJUAQ — The Kativik Regional Government and Makivik Corp. have drafted a letter to Quebec Premier Philippe Couillard asking his government to agree to a rent adjustment for Nunavik’s social housing tenants — and to do it fast.

Social housing tenants in Nunavik have been under the same rent scale since 2005, which provides annual rent increases of eight per cent.

But regional leadership asked the province in 2013 to review those rates, given the high cost of living in Nunavik.

The following year, Quebec announced a temporary rent freeze for Nunavik’s social housing tenants whose combined income is less than $90,000.

The freeze was meant to buy time for Quebec and Nunavik to negotiate a new rent scale for all the region’s social housing tenants, but that’s yet to happen.

Frédéric Gagné, who sits on Nunavik-Quebec housing committee, said the parties came “very close” to an agreement last fall.

Now, the Kativik Municipal Housing Bureau is just weeks away from sending tenants their April 1 rent increase notice, which would go into effect in July.

“So we’re really last minute,” Gagné told KRG councillors at a recent meeting in Kuujjuaq. “There’s not much time to make an agreement. We’re asking [Couillard] to take action on this.”

Nunavik homeowners still face red tape

That’s not the only housing commitment Nunavik is waiting on from the province; potential home buyers want the province’s social housing agency, the Société d’habitation du Québec, to release a grant to help buyers purchase previously-owned homes.

To ease the housing shortage and high costs of building a home in Nunavik, the KMHB administers a subsidy program through the province to offset up to 75 per cent of the cost of building your own home.

Under the program, the subsidy could apply to Nunavimmiut who want to buy existing homes, although the SHQ has yet to approve any subsidies under those circumstances.

That’s causing a headache for homeowners in the region, who say that without the subsidy, they have no guarantee of ever selling their homes.

“In the fall, we were told that we could finally apply the subsidy,” said KMHB director Watson Fournier.

The housing bureau submitted four applications to the SHQ from interested buyers in the region, but Watson said the bureau has yet to receive a response.

KMHB waits on last-minute housing agreement with Ottawa

Nunavik’s social housing body continues to wait for the federal government to deliver on its share of social housing in the region for 2016.

The region’s most recent five-year, tripartite housing agreement with the governments of Quebec and Canada ended in March 2015.

Nunavik was trying to negotiate more funding from the federal government to pay for a catch up program to help alleviate the region’s housing needs, estimated at more than 1,000 units.

But Canada’s Conservative government at that time wasn’t ready to commit and instead proposed an interim agreement to buy more time.

That one-year agreement is set to expire in March 2016 and the KMHB needs to know if it can count on that funding before construction season starts.

Ottawa’s portion would build 60 units in the region this upcoming summer.