GN continues to rent houses in Iqaluit

SARA MINOGUE

While the Government of Nunavut says it’s committed to getting out of staff housing in Iqaluit by 2010, the Nunavut Housing Corp. continues to snap up new properties in the capital.

In January, the Nunavut Housing Corp. signed 47 leases, said Peter Scott, who is president of the GN’s housing body. The Housing Corp. also plans to lease 58 more one- and two-bedroom apartments — two entire buildings — when inspections are completed at Nova Construction’s new development nearing completion on the outer edge of the Road to Nowhere.

The 105 new units are needed to house staff hired into “high priority positions,” Scott said. Those include jobs such as the fire marshal, accountants and medical staff who must be hired from outside the territory.

“The government wants to get out of staff housing, but in the interim we need additional supply for vacant positions,” said Scott, who sees the next five years as a transition phase before the government is out of staff housing altogether.

Statistics from the GN’s 2004/2005 public service report show 242 vacant GN jobs in Iqaluit. The department of health recently added another 26 vacant positions, Scott said.

Scott now has about 45 applications from GN staff who did not get housing with their jobs, but who are eligible to apply for it.

“I could use another 200 houses right now,” Scott said, “but they would all be on short-term, anywhere up to five years, if we were leasing.”

While the new leases might fix a staffing crisis, they are also making it difficult for GN workers who would move out of staff housing if affordable units were available for purchase.

One GN employee was not pleased when he visited an eight-plex construction site also in the Road to Nowhere subdivision last fall, only to learn from the contractor that those units had already been leased by the GN.

“I could’ve easily bought one for $175,000 and had my own bachelor apartment,” said the GN worker, who did not want to be identified.

“If the GN is trying to get out of staff housing, why are they taking and leasing all the apartments that are being built?”

New staff moving into GN staff housing in Iqaluit will pay base rents that reflect the 15 per cent increase other GN tenants saw on Jan. 1 of this year.