Housing corporation looks to award more than a dozen $250,000 loans this year

The Nunavut Housing Corp. hopes to provide 10 to 15 forgivable loans this year to people across the territory who want to build their own homes.

Jimmy Main, vice-president of operations for the housing corporation, called this a target number to help his team “feel the waters” in rolling out the Nunavut Homeownership Assistance Program.

Eligible applicants will receive a 10-year forgivable $250,000 loan to put toward a modular home materials package and use their own “sweat equity” to cover the cost of building their home. After 10 years in the home, the loan is completely forgiven.

“It’s the highest level of assistance of any current program that we deliver,” Main said.

The current average cost for a public housing unit is $700,000 to $750,000, Main said. That’s a 25 per cent decrease from what the corporation spent per unit in the 2022 fiscal year.

“Via our negotiated contract with NCC [Development Ltd.], which provided economies of scale, we were able to lower the price per public housing unit,” he said.

Nunavut Housing Corp. and NCC Development Ltd. are directly responsible for construction of close to half of all the planned houses, including about 1,400 public housing units across Nunavut.

Successful applicants will get one of the Nunavut Housing Corp.’s two home designs for single-family bungalows. They range in size from 1,100 to 1,400 square feet and have two to four bedrooms, depending on the applicant’s family size, with a target construction time of two years or less.

Applicants can come up with their own designs if they have “strong distaste” for the standard ones, but deviations will have to be approved.

“If they come to us saying that they want to build a basement, well, there are no basements up here. We’ll probably say no to that,” Main said.

An officer from the housing corporation will be assigned to each client to provide support from the start of the build through the course of construction.

The new houses will have to follow all municipal bylaws, with potential homeowners responsible for obtaining building and development permits.

The process can be challenging in Nunavut where not enough land is “shovel-ready” for construction, Main said.

“There probably are going to be some scenarios where shortlisted clients may have to delay their build or we will have to put off their approval due to lack of land,” he said.

The new homeownership program is designed to help the corporation meet its goal of building 3,000 new affordable housing units by 2030 as part of Nunavut 3000.

The Nunavut government and Nunavut Housing Corp. announced the $2.6-billion program in 2022 as a response to housing shortages across the territory.

As Nunavut 3000 progresses, the corporation might consider returning some leased land to municipalities if it’s not large enough to accommodate public housing multiplexes. That land would be available for potential homeowners to access.

The GN’s “modernized” homeownership program is a new take on the Homeownership Assistance Program the Northwest Territories government used between 1983 and 1992. It gave people a chance to own a home by receiving construction materials from the government, then building their homes themselves.

At the time, the amount of help wasn’t capped and there were about a dozen home designs. But with the rising cost of construction, the new program had to be different from the original, Main said.

Main himself grew up in a HAP house and said the program “had the aura of being successful.”

To be eligible for the homeownership program, applicants must be 19 years old and have lived in Nunavut for the past year without a home of their own, according to the program guide.

They also have to be willing to provide “sweat equity or other labour to complete the build.”

“This is tailored towards people that do have the ability to construct their own homes,” Main said.

Also, participants cannot have received assistance from the corporation to buy or build a home within the past 10 years and must be able to get bank financing.

“It’s going to be an exciting coming 12 months,” Main said.

“The first package is coming off around this time next year.”

Applications will be accepted until Oct. 18 and must be filled out on the Nunavut Housing Corp.’s website, which includes full details on eligibility.