One in four Nunavik social housing tenants made no rental payments in 2010: housing bureau

Most houses in Nunavik are social housing units similar to these ones in Kuujjuaq, which are maintained by the Kativik Municipal Housing Bureau. The KMHB’s challenge now is to get tenants to pay rent and encourage tenants with good incomes to build their own homes or look at new programs for co-operative housing. (PHOTO BY JANE GEORGE)

Michael Cameron, president of the Kativik Municipal Housing Bureau, and Watson Fournier, KMHB manager, consult during last week’s discussions on housing at the Kativik Regional Government council meeting in Kangirsuk. (PHOTO BY JANE GEORGE)

KANGIRSUK — Please pay your rent every month if you’re a tenant in one of Nunavik’s social housing units.

That’s the plea sent out by Michael Cameron, the president of the Kativik Municipal Housing Bureau, at last week’s Kativik Regional Government council meeting in Kangirsuk.

“For those tenants who pay their rent regularly, thank you very much,” Cameron said.

The KMHB’s audited financial statements for 2010 shows rent arrears for social housing units in Nunavik have swollen to $14 million since 2000.

In 2010, arrears increased by nearly $2.2 million.

“I must report a discouraging increase in the non-payment of rent,” Cameron said in his report to the KRG councillors.

In 2010, one in four tenants in social housing did not pay any rent at all, with the worst levels of non-payment in Kuujjuaraapik, Aupaluk and Ivujivik.

“This discouraging increase in arrears will have consequences on the level of services that the KMHB is trying to offer its tenants,” Cameron said.

During a recent one-month period the KMHB invoiced the region’s 2,373 social housing tenants for about $872,000.

Of these, only 863 paid some rent.

Rent for a two-bedroom unit — the most common size — ranges from $173 to $309, depending whether the tenant is on social assistance or not.

During that one-month period, rental payments gave about $356,000 to the KMHB — 41 per cent of what the regional housing bureau needed.

About 400 social housing tenants in Nunavik owe more than three years worth of rent to the KMHB, according to information discussed June 3 at the KRG meeting.

To encourage more tenants to pay regular rent, the KMHB has made arrangements with organizations in the region so that their employees can make payroll deductions for their rent.

The housing bureau also allows easy repayment schedules for arrears, including reductions in interest if tenants agree to pay off the owed money quickly.

The KMHB also offers budgeting courses for tenants.

As a last resort, the KMHB has also started evicting some tenants who don’t pay rent — five in 2010 — and the bureau has plans to evict up to 16 more of the worst tenants from seven different communities this summer.

The KMHB has also started using videoconferencing to hold hearings with the Quebec Rental Board to get judgments to allow the salaries of people owing rent back rent to be garnished and paid to the KMHB.

Some tenants promise to make voluntary payments to stop evictions, then stop payments as soon as the housing bureau stops moving towards garnishing their wages, Cameron and KMHB manager Watson Fournier told the KRG councillors.

The bureau plans to install interact terminals in all its offices and to establish a system so clients of Desjardins’ Nunavik Financial Services and banks can make their rental payments over the phone or internet.

The aim of all these efforts, said Cameron and Fournier, is to avoid evicting tenants, a process which costs $15,000 per eviction.

The KMHB also plans to start a communications program called Pivallianiq.

The goal of this program is encourage tenants to take care of their houses and “to instil a sense of pride and respect not only for one house” but in every neighbourhood and village.

A housing symposium, scheduled for November in Kuujjuaq, will also look at housing from “the occupant’s perspective.”

Participants at this meeting may also look at ideas for a “better adapted house for Inuit culture.”

This summer, the KMHB will carry out $42 million worth renovations in Akulivik, Inukjuak, Ivujivik, Kangiqsualujjuaq, Kuujjuaq, Kuujjuaraapik, Puvirnituq, Salluit and Tasiujaq as well as smaller repairs to 400 units.

As an encouragement for 200 tenants with good jobs to vacate social housing units, there’s also a new home ownership program — announced as part of Quebec’s Plan Nord — which ups the amount of the subsidies offered under previous home ownership programs.

A co-operative home ownership program is also being designed, which will assist non-profit associations or other groups to build private affordable housing.