Lack of housing drives youth away from Nunavik

When Olivia Ikey Duncan spoke to visiting Parti Québécois politicians Nov. 8 in Kuujjuaq, she felt sweaty and nauseous: the 21-year-old Kuujjuaq woman isn’t used to public speaking.

But Ikey Duncan overcame her fear because she wanted to tell the group from Quebec City, which included PQ leader Pauline Marois, Ungava MNA Luc Ferland and the party’s native affairs critic Alexandre Cloutier, how Nunavik’s lack of housing affects youth like her.

When Ikey Duncan attended college in Montreal, she shared an apartment there with a roommate.

“It was amazing, having your own kitchen. You can be a mess when you want to,” she told Nunatsiaq News.

But now Ikey Duncan is back in Kuujjuaq where doesn’t have a home to call her own.

Ikey Duncan first put her name on a waiting list for social housing in Kuujjuaq when she was 17.

Then, earlier this year, when social housing officials decided to update the list of residents seeking social housing, she re-did her application, and returned it promptly to the Kativik Municipal Housing Bureau.

But Ikey Duncan learned that she has little chance to ever get a unit because she doesn’t have any kids and the allocation of social housing in Nunavik is based on a point system, which favours people with children.

That’s stupid, Ikey Duncan said, because there are more and more single people, like her, without kids, who need housing.

Ikey Duncan wants to see social housing handed out to youth who have jobs and can afford to pay— instead of staying in the hands of those who don’t pay their social housing rent.

According to the KMHB, about one in five social of the 1,482 housing tenants in Kuujjuaq don’t pay their rent— and their arrears now total more than $2.5 million.

“It’s horrible. If they did a credit check on me, I’d totally get housing,” she said.

For now, Ikey Duncan stays with her mother and younger brother in a two-bedroom house where she helps pay the rent.

Because she and her seven-year-old brother don’t want to share a room, he sleeps in a large, walk-in closet.

Although Ikey Duncan has a place to sleep, she doesn’t have any privacy and she can’t hang out with her friends at home—“that’s the worst part. It’s so bad.”

To watch a hockey game, she has to either go to the Kuujjuaq Inn’s lounge or to her boyfriend’s home— and he’s in the same situation, living with his mother, who comes from the south and receives housing through her employer.

When she leaves, her boyfriend will probably have to go, too.

“Then what am I going to do? I don’t want to make such a big move as that,” said Ikey Duncan, who works as a program co-ordinator for Nunavik’s Saputiit youth association,

Saputiit is willing to provide her with housing— but “they don’t have any to give.”

And Saputiit would help her pay for housing, too— but there aren’t any places for rent in Kuujjuaq, where there is no property rental market to speak of.

“I do have the resources to pay for everything and I have a good job. And I can be trusted,” Ikey Duncan said.

But generally large regional organizations like the Kativik Regional Government, which does provide staff housing, only offer units to hires from the south or from other Nunavik communities.

“I’m from Kuujjuaq,” Ikey Duncan said, predicting that she and her friends from Kuujjuaq, who have education and a desire to live independently, will start to move south due to the lack of housing in the community.

“I have a lot of friends who are in college and they don’t want to come back to live with their parents,” she said. “I think they’re going to lose a lot of youth. They’re all going to move down south. Everybody’s getting an education they’re going to leave with their education. We’re all going to go.”

Ikey Duncan recently wrote a letter to the KMHB, Makivik Corp. and the KRG about her frustration with the region’s lack of housing, which prompted the KMHB to invite her to speak to the Quebec City politicians.

What she had to say caught their interest, too.

Cloutier promised to help Ikey Duncan with a petition that she wants to start asking for action on the youth housing crisis so this petition can eventually be tabled in the National Assembly.

The KMHB 2010 housing needs survey says Nunavik needs more than 1,000 one-bedroom units— the kind youth want— but these are also the least economic units to build, the study notes.

Kuujjuaq’s social housing stock includes only 36 one-bedroom units.

A friend who is 30 just got a small social housing unit after 12 years on the list— but Duncan says she won’t wait that long— “another nine years!”

The departure of youth like Ikey Duncan may will start a brain drain from Nunavik, leaving organizations like Makivik Corp. with fewer educated Inuit to take over.

“They’ll be left with all the people who dropped out, had kids and got housing,” she said.