Apartments to be built in six communities with greatest need

KUUJJUARAAPIK-Six Nunavik communities can look forward to receiving 80 new two-bedroom social housing units in 2009.

But these units will only go a short way towards meeting the region's urgent need for social housing, now estimated at 915 units.

Next summer, Puvirnituq will receive 14 duplexes, Inukjuak 10, Salluit eight, Ivujivik four and Kangiqsualujjuq and Kuujjuraapik two, decided councillors at last week's meeting of the Kativik Regional Government in Kuujjuaraapik.

More housing will also be distributed when Quebec comes through with the $25 million promised last August for the construction of 50 more social housing units by 2010.

This summer, 62 social housing units will go up in four Nunavik communities.

The decision on where to build next summer's batch of social housing was based on a ranking of the 14 communities' need for units, which the Kativik Municipal Housing Bureau submitted to the regional council.

The KMHB also showed which communities needed housing by ranking the number of bedrooms lacking in every community.

This ranking showed Puvirnituq and Salluit need more units than bedrooms.

This means some larger units now have too few people living in them, while other smaller units have too many.

To fix this imbalance, the KMHB's 2008 Housing Needs Survey suggests all social housing units must be handed out in the future so every family occupies an appropriate-sized unit.

However, many social housing tenants don't want to move to smaller units even though it might help the other families' overcrowding. Often they've lived in the same unit for so long that they feel they "own" it.

KMHB manager Watson Fourier told the regional council that if families don't start changing houses when their family shrinks, people will still be complaining about overcrowding and lack of housing even after new social housing units are built.

Fournier urged Nunavimmiut to help solve the housing crisis and agree to change houses if asked.

The KHMB oversees 2,126 social housing units in Nunavik, from studio units to six-bedroom houses, for a total of 9,568 tenants. The balance of the region's 11,000 residents is mainly housed in staff housing units.

The KMHB survey shows there's a growing need for one-bedroom social housing units, which are more expensive to build and maintain.

At the same time, one in five of the KMHB's social housing tenants are not paying their rent. In 2007, the KMHB was owed $1.4 million for unpaid rent. The highest amount arrears of $412,510 came from Kuujjuaq, Nunavik's most prosperous community.

The total amount of arrears has risen over the past seven years although the KMHB has offered family budgeting courses, taken tenants to the rental board to force them to pay and encouraged workers to pay rent directly through their salaries.

This last strategy has sometimes backfired, KMHB president Andy Moorhouse said, because some workers have quit their jobs rather than pay rent.

Moorhouse told the regional council it's important for the KMHB to collect rent arrears and for tenants to pay rent or else Quebec's social housing corporation may decide to stop supporting more social housing construction in Nunavik.

Quebec's rental board gives the KMHB the right to evict social housing tenants who don't pay rent. But it hasn't taken this step yet.