Mayor vows to make public housing priority for new year

GREG YOUNGER-LEWIS

Official priority or not, Iqaluit’s mayor has housing on her to-do list for 2004.

During a brainstorming session this month, councillors and senior administrators hashed out three official priority areas for the coming year. Out of nearly 100 suggestions, the group picked infrastructure, economic development and service delivery,

emphasizing safety and cost, as the top priorities.

In an interview after the meetings, Mayor Elisapee Sheutiapik admitted the list didn’t turn out the way she had hoped, with housing left off the list. During the October election campaign, she described Iqaluit’s lack of housing as a pressing problem that she would aim to fix.

Now that she’s in the city’s top political office, she said she won’t let go of that goal.

“How many years has it been since there’s been [new] public housing,” Sheutiapik said. “It’s been years. We’re growing, and it doesn’t make sense that we don’t have new public housing.”

Sheutiapik said staff and council omitted housing because some people argued it didn’t fall within the city’s jurisdiction. However, Sheutiapik believes city hall does have a role to play in dealing with the local housing shortage, at least in speeding up the paperwork and land surveying required to approve sites for homes.

Although short on details, Sheutiapik said her housing strategies will include finding money from federal and territorial governments that could be put into public housing projects. She planned to use a similar approach in creating summer jobs focused on training local youth in construction skills.

Sheutiapik also put faith in the power of networking. She believes many housing groups are currently working in isolation, and need to be brought together. Besides government, Sheutiapik planned to approach Nunavut Tunngavik Inc., in light of its recent lobby work for residents poised to lose their homes because they owed city hall, in some cases, hundreds of thousands of dollars in property tax.

Iqaluit has never had enough housing to support its population. One local housing official describes the current situation as “dire,” while another official estimated hundreds of residents are crowding into shelters or relatives’ homes because they can’t find affordable places to live.

Peter Scott, president of the Nunavut Housing Corp., suggested that the city could lift restrictions against downtown residential buildings higher than four storeys.

“They should also be looking at being a little more flexible on high-density development,” he said.

He said the city also needs to make more land available and cut development costs for home building. He said the city charges developers or private homeowners up to $45,000 to prepare a plot of land that will be on the utilidor system.

Scott argues the development cost is either scaring off developers, or making the houses unaffordable to renters or buyers.

“[The costs of development] are passed on to either renters or to the homeowners,” he said. “So, if there is any way the city can address the high cost of land, that will reflect back on [the cost of] housing.”

Fitting with Sheutiapik’s plans, Scott said the city could find money to offset the development costs through federal government infrastructure programs, and the Government of Nunavut’s department of community government and transportation. Scott also noted that the territorial government used to pay development costs for housing before handing the responsibility over to municipalities years ago.

Scott stressed the urgency of the situation, estimating that Iqaluit needs 200 single family dwellings, based on the waiting list for public housing, and the people who Scott describes as the “invisible homeless” who either can’t be bothered to sign up, are ineligible or have been booted off the list for not re-registering.

Susan Spring, manager of Iqaluit Housing Authority, agreed action is needed, but discouraged city hall from getting involved beyond making more land available for development.

Instead, Spring said Iqaluit should concentrate on mounting a public education campaign against vandalism and break-ins. She said such abuse of housing shortens the life expectancy of a home, and amounts to an “important, overlooked factor” in the city’s housing shortage.

“Not only do we need more housing, we need to take care of what we do have,” Spring said. “I think we need to speak on it publicly, reminding people, it’s a scarce resource, we’re all charged with the responsibility of using it wisely because there are a lot of people waiting in line.

“We have to deal with the future, but we have to deal with the present, too.”