GN hammered on housing shortages

There’s not even enough snow to build igloos, Arviat MLA David Alagalak said during the last sitting of the legislature — and nothing can be done to alleviate the overcrowding of houses in his community.

“It’s getting a bit too much. It’s almost impossible to live a healthy life under one roof with all those people living in those units,” Alagalak said.

Housing was better in the 1960s, he said, when matchbox homes were available — “a very simple construction, two-by-three-foot lumber with three-inch plywood, and painted. And they were satisfactory to those families, very much so.”

Alagalak would like to see changes in the building codes so home construction would be less expensive and stretch housing dollars.

“I think we’ve been going overboard,” he told Olayuk Akesuk, the minister responsible for housing.

In Nunavut, it costs about $330 per square foot to build a new unit or $330,000 for 1,000 square feet.

But, according to the Nunavut Housing Corporation, making changes to the materials wouldn’t cut costs much.

MLAs also asked Akesuk to pay more attention to the housing needs of homelessness “so people aren’t sleeping in their cars at -50.”

Akesuk told the legislature he would be going to Ottawa in April to meet with new federal government officials, including the minister responsible for the Canadian Mortgage and Housing Corporation.

“That’s the best we could do,” Akesuk said. “Hopefully this new government will recognize where we are with housing.”

Akesuk later said he believes that the GN doesn’t have enough money for “all the houses or staff housing we need for our territory.”

“I think that the federal government should step in and, again, it will be on the top of our agenda once I meet with the CMHC Minister in Ottawa next month.”

But Cambridge Bay MLA Keith Peterson said he has reservations about the GN’s plan to get out of staff housing, as a way of building up the territory’s stock of houses and saving money because private companies don’t want to invest in building new units.

“We have an emerging market in Cambridge Bay and a shortage of housing, but then the private sector decides they don’t want to invest in the opportunities that the Nunavut Housing Corporation say are there,” Peterson said in the legislature. “We’re going to have more of a crisis in terms of hiring the staff that is needed to deliver the whole Government of Nunavut’s programs and services.”