Housing shortage forces people to move, Nunavik councillor says

KUUJJUAQ — The housing shortage in Umiujaq is so severe that it’s forcing some residents to relocate, says one of the community’s municipal councillors.

Umiujaq has not received any new housing for the past five years and that’s starting to drive people away, said Jack Niviaxie, who is also Umiujaq’s regional councillor, March 2 at the Kativik Regional Government meeting in Kuujjuaq.

Niviaxie said he knows of two single people and a family who recently left the community of 450 in search of their own housing — two to neighbouring communities and another to Montreal.

Niviaxie blames Nunavik’s point system for housing — the criteria which prioritizes who has the highest need for housing in a given community — which he says prevents single people from receiving their own home.

“It seems one-sided,” Niviaxie said. “There are a lot of single people in their 30s and 40s in Umiujaq who are still living with their parents or siblings.”

Niviaxie’s brother is one of those people. The single man moved to Salluit last month to live with a relative, in hopes of getting better access to housing.

“But the population in Salluit has its own housing needs,” Niviaxie said. “He’ll probably have to wait another 15 years [to get his own place].”

Another 20 single people are in need of homes in Umiujaq, he said, and some don’t have family to depend on.

Another single elder in the village had been moving around to live with different relatives for years until he recently moved to Montreal, Niviaxie said.

When the northern village of Umiujaq was officially established in 1986, many four-bedroom homes were built.

But this pattern of housing construction led to a problem today with the community’s housing.

That’s because some smaller families now have unused bedrooms, while other homes are overcrowded, with up to 16 people living under the same roof.

When the Kativik Municipal Housing Bureau conducted a housing survey in 2010, they looked at the number of bedrooms in each community, and Umiujaq came up with more rooms per capita.

Michael Cameron, Salluit’s regional councillor who also sits on the KMHB, said guidelines show that the Umiujaq residents are not utilizing all their bedrooms and don’t have the same need for housing as other communities.

But that doesn’t show the whole picture, Cameron admitted, adding that the KMHB’s point system is currently being revised.

In 2011, 86 new housing units were allotted to the region, although the KMHB estimates Nunavik is still short 995 units.

The KRG will review 2012 housing allotments at the next meeting of regional councillors in Kangirsuk in May 2011.

In the meantime, Niviaxie plans to bring up the issue of Umiujaq’s housing shortage to Geoffrey Kelley, Quebec’s native affairs minister, who is scheduled to speak to the KRG meeting March 3.

Quebec is under pressure, even from the south, to act on Nunavik’s lack of housing.

In a March 2 news conference in Quebec City, Alexandre Cloutier, the Parti Québecois native affairs critic, called the living conditions in Nunavik “unacceptable,” saying many of the region’s social problems are due to overcrowded housing.

Cloutier slammed the Liberal government over its record on improving housing conditions, quoting Makivik Corp. president Pita Aatami, who said Plan Nord— the Liberals’ grand plan for development in northern Quebec— won’t go ahead unless Nunavik’s need for more housing is met.

“What we would have expected from the Quebec government, is to directly attack this problem which is linked to the social crisis— that of social housing,” Cloutier said. “How many millions are we ready to give to bring these people out of poverty? That’s the real question. And then, what is the will of the government or will it continue to close its eyes, as is the case right now?”