FCNQ pitches co-op fix for Nunavik’s housing crisis

Social housing units line the streets in Kuujjuaq — but there aren’t enough of them to go around. A “Feasibility study on the development of housing cooperatives in Nunavik” suggests a way hundreds of new housing units could be built in Nunavik. (PHOTO BY JANE GEORGE)

Co-operatively built and owned housing units could help alleviate Nunavik’s need for low-cost housing, says a “Feasibility study on the development of housing cooperatives in Nunavik.”

The Fédération des Coopératives du Nouveau-Québec wants Quebec’s housing corporation to increase the subsidy for co-operatively built housing units in Nunavik.

This would be a lower-cost way to increase the number of housing units in the region, where there’s a need for 1,067 new one-bedroom units, according to a 2013 housing needs survey.

With only 80 privately-owned dwellings in Nunavik, and an “almost non-existent” rental housing market, co-operatively owned and built units could change that situation, a study prepared for the FCNQ said.

The new units could free up social housing units and, at the same time, provide housing for the hundreds of Nunavik residents who work for the co-ops.

A plus: these co-operatively owned and built units would also save Quebec’s housing corporation a lot of money over the long-term.

That’s the plan contained in a “Feasibility Study on the Development of Housing Cooperatives in Nunavik,” a 60-page detailed study prepared by Quebec’s co-operative housing federation for the FCNQ.

The study provides ample statistics and financial information to back up its position that co-op housing would be “an incubator for knowledge and know-how, for the development of self-confidence and accountability, and for the implementation of solidarity, tolerance and respect.”

Housing co-ops give their members quality housing at lower cost, more stability and a safe living environment, the study said.

And co-op units also provide people with “real control” over their living environment — something missing in Nunavik, where 97 per cent of residents live in social housing, the study said.

That increased sense of control could also create a positive spill-over in other ways by giving tenants a sense of belonging and a stronger desire to maintain their units, which the Kativik Municipal Housing Bureau has struggled to achieve through its Pivallianiq housing pride program.

Housing co-ops would also help their members gain rights over their housing units and help them acquire equity to buy a future dwelling, the study said.

The cost of a four-building complex with 20 co-operatively owned and managed units: $6.5 million.

Sound good? But here’s the problem.

The Quebec government’s $68.2 million Nunavik home ownership program, announced in 2011,was striving to see 15 to 20 per cent of Nunavimmiut living in private or co-op homes within 25 years.

Quebec’s housing corporation, the Société d’habitation du Québec, said it also hoped about 50 co-operatively-owned units would be built in Nunavik by 2015.

Under this plan, Nunavimmiut who form non-profit co-operative associations to build and own their housing would see 90 per cent of their construction costs covered, and benefit from additional perks for insurance and taxes that private homeowners receive.

But even with those subsidies, the rent for a one-bedroom co-operative unit, as calculated by the FCNQ-commissioned study, still comes in at $1,320 a month — hardly an incentive for anyone to move out of a similar social housing unit where the rent would be $334, the study said.

By increasing the amount subsidized by the SHQ from 75 per cent to 100 per cent, the rent would decrease to $902. With an additional $130,000 annual subsidy to the co-operative association managing the units, monthly rents would fall further to amounts similarly paid in social housing, the study said.

And, while the annual maintenance deficit for a social housing unit is $19,000, that would fall to only $6,500 for a co-ooperatively built and owned unit, the study’s calculations show.

The study also advocates prefabricating and assembling housing materials in Nunavik to shave nine per cent off the construction cost — an idea also proposed by a project, still looking for a backer, which would see locally-based teams prepare housing components.

The study lists many reasons why the housing co-operative construction project would work better than a private home ownership program: private homes in small Nunavik communities, for example, are expensive to build and hard to sell later.

And the study suggests people involved in Nunavik’s strong co-op movement would be ideal ambassadors to embrace co-op housing since they already support co-operative values and principles.

It also suggests that the FCNQ construction arm would be well-placed to build the units and “projects would stand a greater chance of success.”

A Makivik Corp.-operated construction division now builds social housing in Nunavik.

At the recent northern housing forum at Laval university in Quebec City, Jean-François Arteau, a lawyer who formerly worked for Nunavik organizations and is now a vice-president at the SHQ, admitted that the recent programs to encourage home construction and ownership have failed.

Arteau did not address a plan to increase subsidies for co-operative housing.

But he did say social housing needs new partnerships — and that the solution to Nunavik’s housing crisis will come “from Inuit.”