Nunavut government heads to Pond Inlet for homelessness survey

A Government of Nunavut survey is now underway in Pond Inlet on homelessness in this north Baffin community. (FILE PHOTO)

Interviewers with the Government of Nunavut’s poverty reduction division may come knocking on your door this week, if you live in Pond Inlet.

They’re in town to better understand homelessness in this north Baffin community of about 1,700.

The survey, a GN advisory said, is intended to identify community-based solutions to homelessness and rally support for those efforts.

Households included in the survey have been selected at random and the information gathered by interviewers will remain “confidential and anonymous,” the GN said.

Participants will be compensated for their time. But it remains unclear how much compensation is being offered, or why the survey is being done in Pond Inlet.

This information would only be available after the survey is completed March 9, a spokesperson for Nunavut’s Department of Family Services told Nunatsiaq News.

Among other obligations, Nunavut’s Poverty Reduction Act requires the poverty reduction secretariat to gather baseline data on homelessness in Nunavut.

The last public information on homeless numbers in the territory dates from 2014 when, according to a survey of homelessness in Nunavut’s three largest communities, the the GN found fewer than 100 homeless Nunavummiut.

That’s although a 2010 Nunavut Household Needs Survey found at least 1,200 homeless in Nunavut.