Sell surplus social houses to low-income homeowners?

The Nunavut Housing Corp. has issued a Request for Proposals on the disposal of eight single-family housing units in Iqaluit, in two advertisements in Nunatsiaq News of April 8.

The first question should be: why is the Government of Nunavut willing to dispose of housing units that can be refurbished and used to meet the overwhelming housing demand of families in Iqaluit?

One just needs to visit the local housing authority to see the long waiting list to understand how desperate the situation is.

From what I understand from a local construction contractor, a mere $30,000 or so per house and a lot to site each house on, each house could potentially be leased out as a home or an office, similar to the surplus houses now sited in North Forty and used as commercial lease properties by a local company.

So, why doesn’t the Nunavut Housing Corp. come up with a creative way, with the Iqaluit Housing Authority, to turn the houses into an affordable housing opportunity for low income earners currently living in their other IHC units?

They did it before, back in the early 1990s when they offered residents in some units the opportunity to purchase the houses on a lease to purchase basis, I believe.

So, instead of making these units available to businesses, why not bring these units up to code and make them available to the low income families living in social housing?

My second question is: why is Nunavut Housing Corp. breaking up the eight single family units up into two requests for proposals? Why not issue an RFP for each house being surplused or put all eight on one RFP?

(Name withheld by request)
Iqaluit

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