Only seven communities to receive new housing

KUUJJUAQ — The task of satisfying Nunavik’s hunger for social housing is as impossible as feeding a starving family with a scrap of meat.

But this week, the Kativik Regional Government council had to make do with what it has when councillors determined how the 60 two-bedroom units allocated to Nunavik as part of Makivik Corporation’s annual social housing program would be distributed among communities.

It wasn’t an easy job for councillors to balance their communities’ craving for housing with only 30 new duplexes for 2003.

“I know every community wants to see housing built,” KRG chairman Johnny Adams told council.

In the end, councillors decided to spread the precious housing units among seven communities, but the process leading up to this decision was long and hard.

Kativik Municipal Housing Bureau manager Watson Fournier handed out a list that showed how many bedrooms each Nunavik community would need to end overcrowding.

Kuujjuaq, Puvirnituq, Salluit, Kangiqsujuaq and Tasiujaq topped this list, needing up to 19 per cent more bedrooms. In the case of Kuujjuaq, Nunavik’s largest community, this amounted to a need for more than 200 bedrooms.

There was no way the new social housing units could put much of a dent in this.

“We’re talking about building 120 bedrooms of the 800 we’re missing,” Fournier told the councillors.

Councillors from communities that showed excess bedrooms — Kuujjuaraapik, Aupaluk, Quaqtaq and Umiujaq — felt the numbers didn’t accurately reflect the housing crunch back home.

They pointed out that some empty bedrooms in their communities can’t be filled because families don’t want to move even when their homes are larger than they need, and they won’t share their homes with non-relatives.

Most of Umiujaq’s social housing units have four-bedrooms. Councillor Davidee Niviaxie said this has lead to a situation where some families have unused bedrooms, while other homes are over-crowded, with up to 16 people living under the same roof.

Sometimes residents don’t want to live in usable houses because of violent events or suicides that have occurred inside.

With only about 50 privately owned houses, moving out of social housing to a rental unit doesn’t seem to be an option, either.

Councillors finally decided to scrape all the meat off the bone and give duplexes to the communities with the greatest need, and they portioned out the housing according to the actual number of bedrooms needed in a community.

One unit would go to Tasiujaq, two units would go to Akulivik, and Kangiqsujuaq, four to Salluit, seven to Puvirnituq, four to Salluit and 11 to Kuujjuaq.

Makivik had suggested concentrating the new social housing in only four communities to save costs.

To cut expenses, but spread the housing around, councillors agreed Umiujaq would receive four 20-foot by 25-foot

collapsible houses, about the size of a sealift container.

Quaqtaq, whose councillor Charlie Tukkiapik had sought one house for a family living in a shack, was not on the list for any new social housing.

Councillors from other communities were not impressed when they learned the homeless family in question had trashed a home in another community and never paid their rent.

Councillors agreed that communities with a low amount of rent arrears should be first on the list for new housing.

Every dollar that the Kativik Municipal Housing Bureau manages to collect on the $5 million Nunavimiut owe in arrears will be matched by Quebec’s housing bureau and used to build new housing.

Some suggested Nunavimiut need more access to home ownership incentives and grants for renovations to older social housing units.