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Nunavut is taking another small step in addressing the housing crisis.
Land for Homes (L4H) brought together representatives from several groups including Nunavut Tunngavik Inc. (NTI), Nunavut Housing Corporation (NHC), Nunavut Association of Municipalities (NAM), regional Inuit associations, development corporations, and all levels of government to talk about challenges and collaborations to remove barriers to access housing.
L4H is a partnership between NTI, NAM and NHC and the Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation since 2023.
Wayne Olsen, project lead with Arctic Strategies Consulting, said having conversations about housing in Nunavut is always important.
“There’s a lot of pressure on finding land for housing over the next five to eight years,” he said. “All of the partners involved in planning and preparing and finding that land are feeling pressure, particularly in communities where there’s a shortage of build-ready land or shortage of land that’s easy to build on.”
Olsen also said it’s more than just finding the land because there’s everything else that has to go into putting it together.
“Simple things like roads, drainage, and power poles can be very expensive (and) can require advance notice,” he said. “Some communities need additional resources to build that infrastructure, so there’s a lot of overlap between different entities at the municipal level, the territorial level, from the perspective of NHC and the Inuit organizations developing housing under their own action plan. This initiative is really saying that housing is one of the most critical things needed in the territory that Nunavummiut need and have a right to lead productive and healthy lives.”
In summer 2024, the L4H team joined an NHC tour to visit 10 communities as they were looking for land and talking to these communities about housing. Additionally, another seven communities were toured with the regional Inuit organizations.
“That is part of reaching out to those communities to gather the knowledge,” said Olsen. “We don’t think of that as a full comprehensive engagement process, it was part of our information gathering.”
The next piece L4H is involved with is what to do with what knowledge gained, added Olsen.
“There are many initiatives that go on in communities over time where the same questions get asked again and again,” he said. “The tools focus on access to knowledge and access to information. They would be useful for future land claim processes, useful to municipalities in land supply processes and administration.
The overall goal for L4H is to better understand the way of looking at land and housing.
“Land is more than a lot or a parcel,” said Olsen. “It means more than that to Nunavummiut and especially to Inuit. Housing is more than just a door or a roof. Everything we’ve done has been in the context of understanding that housing is an extremely important thing for people of Nunavut. It all comes down to culture and community than the nuts and bolts of it. Those nuts and bolts are important, but it’s only part of the thinking that leads to better housing and communities.”
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