The NDP says that since the Yukon Party government has been in power, it has become harder, not easier, to find affordable housing in the territory.

In the legislature on Tuesday, NDP MLA Kate White charged the government with failing to make affordable housing a priority.

She pointed to a group of subsidized rental units in Porter Creek that she said are slated for closure in about a year’s time.

This comes as mobile homeowners at Casa Loma park are being told they have to vacate their lots this summer.

“Both a mobile home park and now a low-income housing complex have announced that they’ll close their doors, but the Yukon Party keeps pretending that there’s no problem with the availability of affordable housing in Yukon,” White said during question period Tuesday.

“You can’t argue that you’re in control of a problem when you’ve had three mandates in government and the situation is only getting worse.”

The units purportedly set to close in Porter Creek are operated by the Grey Mountain Housing Society, a not-for-profit group which offers social housing in Whitehorse to First Nations tenants.

The society receives funding from the Canadian Mortgage and Housing Corp. (CMHC), a Crown corporation that finances social housing across the country.

Tenants are being forced out because the units are going to be put up for sale as market housing, White said.

A media representative from the society was not available to speak to the Star before press time this afternoon.

No one else at the Grey Mountain society would confirm that units in Porter Creek were set to close, nor indicate how many households such a closure would affect.

Social housing is not synonymous with affordable housing.

Housing operated by the Yukon Housing Corp. is offered on a “rent-geared-to-income” (RGI) basis. That means a household’s rent amounts to 25 per cent of its combined household income.

Housing is said to be affordable when it accounts for less than 30 per cent of a household’s before-tax income, according to the CMHC.

Affordable housing can be offered by government agencies, the private sector or non-profits and can include many forms of housing including cooperative housing, rental housing, transitional housing and home ownership.

Access to affordable housing is a serious and persistent problem for tenants all over Canada.

CMHC president Evan Siddall said that about 15 per cent of households in the Yukon are in “core housing need,” when he spoke at the Yukon Chamber of Commerce in April.

This means they are living in housing they can’t afford and putting income toward rent that would otherwise be spent on food, clothing and other necessities, or they live in housing that is over crowded, or badly in need of repairs, or some combination of these.

“It is in places like the North, and also on First Nations reserves, where our housing system is severely put to the test,” Siddall told the Chamber last month.

“And where in too many instances, in too many communities, and for too many families, it falls far short of delivering the types of housing outcomes that people deserve.”

Stacey Hassard, the minister responsible for the Yukon Housing Corp., said the government is working to expand access to affordable housing in the territory.

“We continue to do the work that needs to be done to provide housing for as many Yukoners as we can. We’ve tried different systems. We’ve tried to be innovative about it,” he said in the legislature on Tuesday.

Still, Hassard acknowledged that access to affordable housing in the territory remains a challenge for many Yukoners.

“I’m not going to stand here and say that we have solved all of the issues and that housing is no longer an issue here in the Yukon,” he said.

White has been a champion for affordable housing in the legislature this sitting.

She has repeatedly called on the government to come to the aid of Casa Loma mobile homeowners, and now the residents of Grey Mountain Housing in Porter Creek.

She said in the past five years, the government has twice cancelled plans to build new affordable rental units in the territory, which she says could have resulted in 175 additional homes.

One of these was Lot 262, a 4.2-hectare area of land near Range Road and Mountainview Drive that was intended to be developed as affordable housing. It was cancelled after the government couldn’t attract the interest of a suitable private developer.

“The Yukon government is delivering on our commitment to work with the private sector to address the need for more affordable housing,” cabinet minister Brad Cathers said in a March 23, 2012 news release about Lot 262.

“With the release of Lot 262, we are moving quickly to make land available to the private sector so that new affordable rental accommodation will be developed.”

“This government has cancelled more affordable housing units than they have actually facilitated in building,” said White.

“Now, affordable housing spaces like the Casa Loma park and Grey Mountain Housing units are shutting their doors. So where will these Yukoners go?”

In an interview with the Star this morning, White stressed the urgent need to address the housing situation of the Grey Mountain Housing Society residents, whose futures appear to be uncertain.

“They don’t have recourse. There are no rules that are being broken,” she said.

“They’re going to have to find somewhere else.... In the meantime, they’re stressed out, and they’re trying to figure out what to do next.”