Cape Dorset pulls out of social housing

The Hamlet of Cape Dorset will get out of the management of social housing in the community by April 1, 2012, when an appointed local housing authority will take over, the Nunavut Housing Corp. announced Sept. 29.

Cape Dorset first took responsibility for social housing in the mid-1990s, through an agreement with the Government of the Northwest Territories, under a territorial policy called “community empowerment.”

But that arrangement, which Nunavut inherited in 1999, is no longer suitable for Cape Dorset, the community’s mayor said.

“Council and I felt that we really needed to focus on streamlining our municipal programs,” Cape Dorset Mayor Cary Merritt said in a news release.

“Transferring the responsibility for housing to a local housing authority will allow us to concentrate on the delivery of our core municipal services,” Merritt said.

The Cape Dorset hamlet council passed a resolution this past July 20 to ask the housing corporation to work out a transfer of responsibility for public housing back to corporation.

The hamlet and the corporation are now working on a plan to transfer housing assets, budgets and, where possible, municipal staff housing back to the new housing authority

Housing authorities are local bodies whose members are appointed by the housing minister, unlike housing associations, whose boards are elected by tenants.

This past Sept. 30, Cape Dorset also gave up responsibility for local social service programs, which it first acquired in 1994 through the community empowerment experiment.

This past August, Merritt said the territorial government is better able to provide social services to Cape Dorset residents than the hamlet government.

“We have many other areas to focus on in our community and social services is one area that the territorial government looks after in most communities, as it has broader access to human resource requirements and services,” Merritt said Aug. 30.