Several teachers homeless after hiring boom

SARA MINOGUE

It was good news for the Department of Education — a full roster of teachers hired and ready to go for the new school year.

Yet it quickly turned to bad news for several teachers who, two weeks into the school year, are still waiting for the government housing they were told would come with the job.

Teachers in Hall Beach are being forced to share accommodations with other teachers they don’t know. In Chesterfield Inlet, three teachers are living in a hotel.

Whale Cove has a shortage of adequate housing for teachers, and in Rankin Inlet, one new teacher has been splitting time between a tent and her daughter’s cramped apartment until she can get the government housing she was promised.

“If there’s no sooner rather than later end, it’s possible that we might lose some teachers,” said Jimmy Jacquard, president of the Federation of Nunavut Teachers.

In Iqaluit, 10 teachers hired from the South were still living in hotels at the beginning of the school year on August 29. This past Friday, seven were still in hotels, with three in the Capital Suites and four in the Frobisher Inn.

Two more southern teachers made the mistake of moving to Iqaluit before getting jobs. That gave them priority as local hires. They qualify for government housing, but they go on the bottom of the waiting list, and they do not qualify for temporary accommodations or per diems until that housing is found.

“We have two teachers that don’t really have a place to live,” Jacquard said. “They knew that they were eligible for housing and thought that housing would just be given to them.”

For now, both are living with friends or family, but neither has their own bedroom.

“Nobody saw this coming,” said Jacquard, who got the bad news when he took over as president in July.

In Iqaluit, part of the reason is the unusually high turnover rate this year.

There are 23 new teachers in Iqaluit — almost a 25 per cent turnover rate in a community that now has about 100 teachers. Several of those who left owned homes, or had a spouse with housing benefits, which means that no government of Nunavut units were vacated.

Inuksuk High School took the biggest hit with 12 new staff — the biggest turnover for that school in recent history. The new vice-principal is living in Capital Suites with his wife and twins. They need a three-bedroom unit.

“That could be a long wait,” Jacquard said.

Jacquard, who has worked with the teachers’ union for the past seven years, said housing has not been a major issue in the past, but that “we see it becoming an issue in the next few years.”

The union is also powerless to do anything about it. Until 1979, teacher housing was negotiable.

After that, however, a new public service act came into force, which made housing and rents exempt from discussions.

“Although the GN is responsible for housing teachers, it’s not something we have the right to negotiate right now,” Jacquard said.

Even if they could negotiate, the housing shortage is government-wide.

The Nunavut Housing Corp., which manages GN staff housing, had 26 government employees — including 10 teachers — on a waiting list for housing in Iqaluit this past Monday.

The list is long enough that the GN human resources department is advertising fewer positions that come with housing until the backlog can be cleared.

“All that we can do is wait for units to become available,” said Peter Scott, NHC’s president.

Normally six to eight units become free every week as GN staff either leave, buy houses, or make other accommodation arrangements, Scott said. A staff housing allocation committee, made up of several GN departments, meets weekly to decide who gets housing first.

“Health and safety related positions have the highest priority, and teachers are included in that, but also nurses, doctors, health professionals, positions involved in corrections are high priority,” Scott said.
“They’re all put at the top of the list.”