‘Like everyone else:’ Nunavut 3000 gives Kinngait family hope for better home
Hamlet to get 70 new public housing units by 2030
Sarah Samayualie and Qiatsuq Ragee in their house in Kinngait with their adult daughter and three grandkids. Left to right: Sarah Samayualie, Inuluk Mathewsie, Sandra Samayualie, Aniqmiuq Mathewsie, Geetita Samayualie and Qiatsuq Ragee. (Photo by Arty Sarkisian)
Sarah Samayualie and Qiatsuq Ragee have lived in their three-bedroom burgundy house for the past 20 years.
It was built in the 1960s just across from Kinngait’s local Northern store and “sometimes smells like rot,” Ragee said.
Nunatsiaq News met up with the couple in their house on a summer day in July to see what their living situation is like and what they hope the territorial government’s housing plans can offer for them.
Officials from Nunavut Housing Corp. and other government organizations toured the hamlet the following day, looking at potential lots for housing for Nunavut 3000, a $2.6-billion project to build 3,000 new units across the territory by 2030.
Kinngait is set to get 70 new public housing units as part of the plan.
Samayualie and Ragee acquired their house in 2004 after two years on the public-housing waitlist and now pay $60 a month for it, which is the minimal rent for public housing units in Nunavut, according to the Nunavut Housing Corp. website. It’s available to tenants with an annual household income under $33,280.
The family was reluctant to show their home at first.
Sarah Samayualie and Qiatsuq Ragee are hoping to apply for one of the new units promised as part of Nunavut 3000. (Photo by Arty Sarkisian)
“I’m not sure you want to see it,” Ragee said.
The house has three small bedrooms with queen-size mattresses almost completely filling the space of each one. Taking up the rest of the rooms are clothes, hanging from the walls or just stored in piles on the floor.
There are cracks and holes in the walls, some hidden behind photos and art prints.
Most of the kitchen cabinet doors don’t close and inside the house is the smell of mould.
Ragee said he and his family live “like everyone else” in Kinngait. Ragee was born in 1967 just outside of Kinngait in a house “made of rocks and grass,” he said, while Samayualie was born in the hamlet.
They both have lived in Kinngait their whole lives and they both used to work at the Co-op. Now, Ragee makes and sells his art.
The pair lives with three of their four adult children, as well as their three grandchildren, who often sleep in the house along with their mothers.
“And there is another grandkid on the way,” Ragee said.
In Kinngait, it’s common to see people of three or four generations crowded under the same roof, said Kinngait assistant senior administrative officer for Janice Mathewsie during a meeting with the housing team last week. She added this overcrowded situation leads to “sexual and health issues.”
One in three households in Nunavut have five or more people living under the same roof, according to 2021 data from Statistics Canada.
About 35 per cent of homes do not have enough bedrooms for their occupants, compared to five per cent nationally, according to a 2020 report by Nunavut Tunngavik Inc. At the same time, 48 per cent of Nunavummiut live in houses that are “functionally unsuitable.”
“There is a mismatch in the required number of bedrooms for a household based on the age, sex and relationships among household members,” according to the Nunavut Tunngavik Inc. report.
“I think that’s kind of what Nunavut 3000 is all about,” said Juanie Pudluk, the associate deputy minister of Nunavut Housing Corporation, during the meeting in the Kinngait hamlet office.
“It’s to try and alleviate that issue, and it hopefully helps out with the social and health issues.”
That said, Pudluk said that the greatest demand in Nunavut is for smaller units for smaller families.
“I think what the housing corporation primarily is trying to do is build as many units as it can to meet the housing backlog and need, which primarily is in people that need one and two-bedroom units for families that are growing,” he said.
Despite that, Samayualie and Ragee are hoping to get a chance to apply for one of the new units promised by Nunavut 3000. And they want something with more rooms so their children and grandchildren can live with them.
Ragee also has a small, personal wish — a coffee table.
“But look there is no space,” he said pointing at the approximately one metre between the family’s couch and the living room cabinet.
“We want more space,” Samayualie said. “We have a good life with our grandchildren, but we need more space.”
Sarah Samayualie and Qiatsuq Ragee live in their three-bedroom one-storey burgundy house built in the 1960s just across from the Kinngait’s local Northern store. (Photo by Arty Sarkisian)
They need to raise the $60 a month rent to at least $600. Create a budget and be held accountable.
OK……. what does it change?
If your rent is $60, you’re receiving social services. Social services comes from the GN.
So, is the GN supposed to increase your monthly cheque $540 so you can pay $540 more? It all comes from the same pot of money.
Please explain what changes?
Of course it all comes out of the same pot, but for the tenant, it teaches responsibility and requires them to budget their “social benefits”. These are lessons and skills that can then be applied elsewhere in life.
Over 20 years, this family has paid $14,400 in rent. I pay $14,400 in mortgage payments in 9 months, for a house that I purchased that still needs updating from its 1980s vintage.
Leave it to the colonist to invoke a bit of “whataboutism”.
Since you brought it up.
Whatabout the fact most of the damage in that house is tenant inflicted/vandalism?
Do you think in the south tenants can damage their rentals and the landlords come and fix it for free? In reality, they get a bill and/or an eviction notice and a bill.
Whatabout the mould over the window that the family is breathing that could be cleaned up with a cloth and bleach in less than 10 min?
There are two major housing problems in Nunavut:
1: There is a shortage of housing.
2: The Housing Corporation and clearly some tenants are doing a horrendously bad job of maintaining the existing housing.
The Feds are making an expensive mistake dealing with #1, before fixing #2.
The truth is, pictures like this do not convince knowledgeable southerners to invest in Nunavut housing. These pictures indicate something is really wrong.
yea hey, the colonists should take their money and go home!
Oh wait… nevermind
A year of their rent is less than one of my payments that I make every 2 weeks. I also have a significant amount of my pay deducted for income tax, some of which ends up going to pay for the public housing program.
Those living conditions are objectively poor. Would the housing corp stop tenants from cleaning and patching the walls and adding a fresh coat of paint?
Are there any market rent options in town? What are those like?
The story says Ragee used to work at the co-op, but now he makes and sells art. Why did his gainful employment end? I suspect his income reported to CRA decreased following that move.
Maybe it would be possible to increase household income and to use that money to improve living conditions? Just a suggestion.
What does Nunavut’s future look like if a large number of people don’t bother to earn money, and continue to expect basically free housing in perpetuity?
Would housing stop tenants from cleaning, patching, and painting walls? No.
Have there been people complaining on social media that it’s taken too long for housing to come change their lightbulb? Yes.
So when the people get their 70 new homes, are they going to keep them clean and not bust them up in drunken fights? Are they going to look after the home and make repairs if needed. If they smash a window, will they be paying themselves for the new windows. Or is everything just given to them and not earned.
When you don’t work and earn money and everything is given to you, you learn nothing about responsibility and you definitely don’t care about the home, its free, someone else will look after it. So in 10-20 years Nunavut will be in the same boat with no housing because the ones they built, they are now busted and delipidated. Vicious cycle over and over again.
Hold on just a second. Please don’t white wash everyone under one brush stroke. Public Housing units have not been maintained by the housing corporation. While it is true that tenants could do better at cleaning and minor repairs, perhaps a training program to teach these skills would be a good start? We are only 1 or 2 generations off of the land, and these skills could be offered ideally by elders working for Nunavut Housing.
As to your point about income reported to CRA decreasing. I am sure it did. But I don’t think necessarily that their realized income decreased. It may have very well increased. So much of this territory works for cash, and never reports it to CRA. Nor do they report it to housing. Selling art is a real business, and some of that art that takes mere hours to create can sell for $500 to $1000 easily. But none of this cash income is ever reported.
nationally there is a suggestion that no more then 30% of your income should go to housing. Even at $30,000 a year that would equate to over $700 per month. Yet here in Nunavut we have stuck with $60.00. Having served on housing authority board of directors previously, I can tell you there are many tenants that fall behind and don’t even manage to pay the $60.00 a month. This goes on for months and months and years at a time. Next to no evictions. Which in our climate is probably a good thing.
While you are correct to say people are only one or two generations off the land and these skills haven’t been learned. I will point out this territory is filled with very competent snowmobile, outboard and ATV mechanics. The skill level required for household maintenance is much lower.
Quite often in life we make choices based on what we value and what we don’t.
Housekeeping and repair skills can be learned from YouTube. No need to rope elders into this.
And it’s not cool to not pay your taxes. Report your income, otherwise, you’re cheating.
Which community is selling their art for $500 to $1000? Reality is that they do not even sell their art for that much money here. Tell us where they make that much money on art so I can tell friends and family to go sell them their. The ignorance.
It’s all the same all across territory. Bad smell from rotten old homes causes health issues. It doesn’t gets worked on. Need really strong health to survive. They use to help from our knowledgable supporters, it changed.
Renovations, paintings, dry wall repair, it can come from units renters pocket to make repairs. Let the housing know first, than make repairs. If person is working maybe at mines, or at gn coop northern, they are well taken care of.
All this new funding from the feds is a welcome sight, unfortunately this government probably will not get re-elected as there is so much hate towards the PM, the new guys that will probably get elected will make all kinds of cuts to the government and use their trickle down economics, we need to use these funds as fast as possible before all the cuts start again.
How about any Inuit in Nunavut able to apply for housing in all of the territory. I wouldn’t mind appyling in other places.