Quebec to revive stalled talks on Nunavik’s rent freeze, housing

The Quebec government has promised to help move along negotiations towards a new rent scale in Nunavik, something regional leaders have been advocating for since 2013. (PHOTO BY SARAH ROGERS)

Quebec Premier Philippe Couillard has promised Nunavik leaders that he’ll appoint a new government representative to help move stalled negotiations with the province’s social housing body.

Starting in 2013, Nunavik’s leadership has been asking the Société d’habitation du Québec to freeze rent for social housing tenants across the region. Those tenants have been under the same rent scale since 2010, which increases by eight per cent each year.

In 2014, Quebec announced a temporary freeze for tenants whose combined income is less than $90,000, while negotiations began to hammer out a new rent scale.

But that’s yet to happen, with Kativik Regional Government and Makivik Corp. leaders saying the two sides have reached an impasse.

On a recent visit to Nunavik, Quebec’s municipal affairs minister, Martin Coiteux, indicated a new negotiator—independent of the SHQ—would be named shortly, with hopes of sitting back down to negotiations later this month.

Leaders of Nunavik’s regional organizations are now expressing hope and optimism that some of Nunavik’s housing woes will get the attention they need.

“We were unfortunately at loggerheads with the SHQ on a few key issues,” said Makivik president Jobie Tukkiapik in a Sept. 8 release.

“Minister Coiteux demonstrated an understanding of our situation with that organization, and he came with a solution, not more stalling.”

In addition to talks around a new rent scale, Tukkiapik said the province has agreed to revisit the SHQ’s home ownership program—which offers subsidies for first-time buyers to purchase or build their own home—in order to make it more accessible to Nunavimmiut.

Although the program has been revised in the past, potential homeowners say they continue to face stumbling blocks.

Since 2012, the Kativik Municipal Housing Bureau said only about a dozen houses have been built or purchased under the program.

“Inuit want to buy their own homes,” said KMHB president Daniel Oovaut in the same release.

“But salaries are basically flat lining right now, rent is eating up so much of people’s pay, and the result is Inuit can’t save enough money to buy a house. There are major problems that need to be fixed.”

Finally, Nunavik housing officials say they’re working with Ottawa to sort out funding issues they say could impact the construction of 60 units across the region that were meant to be in move-in condition by December.

The region is also waiting on funding to construct an additional 10 elders’ homes and more than 140 units in 2017—money announced by the federal government in last March’s budget.

Nunavik typically negotiates five-year tri-partite agreements with Quebec and Ottawa to deliver social housing to the region.

But the region has negotiated with the federal and provincial governments on an interim basis since the most recent agreement expired in March 2015.

Regional leader are hoping that the release of a long-awaited cost-of-living study later this year will help demonstrate the high expenses and demands of living in the region.