In response to a critical audit from the federal government, the legislature’s public accounts committee has issued a report giving six specific recommendations to improve how housing is provided in the territory for those in the greatest need.

The report, released last Friday, focuses on problems with waiting lists, eligibility thresholds, needs-based prioritization and community needs assessments.

“They worked really hard to come up with recommendations that are tangible to show Yukoners we are working towards their best interests,” said Laura Lang, the Yukon Housing Corp.’s (YHC’s) policy and communications director.

The 2022 audit from the federal office of the auditor general (OAG) outlined major deficiencies in how affordable housing is provided for the people facing homelessness or the possibility of homelessness.

The audit also says many of these problems have been lingering unaddressed since a 2010 audit, resulting in growing waitlists and wait times for access to housing.

At the time, the audit urged the YHC and the Department of Health and Social Services to review their eligibility and prioritization models, undertake regular needs analysis and improve information systems.

The first two recommendations from the committee report focus on waitlists.

The YHC’s president admitted during a public hearing on Jan. 31 that the modelling they use to forecast how many people need housing must improve, suggesting some of the issues could be helped by using information from a by-name list held by the Safe at Home Society, instead of relying on their own waitlists.

The YHC waitlists are simply a list including everyone who has self-identified and requested help with housing, rather than a list that has actually identified the Yukoners most in need.

There are privacy problems with using the by-name list that the YHC is trying to work out.

The Safe at Home Society is a non-profit that does not want to violate the privacy of the individuals it works with.

The first recommendation tells the YHC to improve their modelling, while the second says they need to engage with stakeholders to look into how to use this by-list to assess the veracity of their own waitlists.

The third recommendation says the YHC needs to better consult with stakeholder groups about their new tenant allocation policy and any future changes to that policy.

This new policy gets rid of the old groupings used to decide who gets housing first, meaning vulnerable populations and those with complex needs don’t necessarily get to jump to the front of the queue.

Groups such as Safe at Home and the Yukon Women’s Transition Home Society made submissions to the committee that questioned why YHC policies stopped prioritizing the most vulnerable Yukoners.

Lang said this is meant to make sure everybody has a chance to get into housing, and get into the right type of housing, while avoiding having certain groups wallowing on waitlists for long periods of time.

“How can we create housing that is respectful of people, respectful of neighbours and specifically respectful of good client outcome?” she said.

This new “community housing” model is based on the 2017 national housing strategy, she said, adding that auditors were not taking this new approach into account when they levied their initial criticisms in 2022.

Still, comments in the report from the transition house society ask why the auditor general found that women and children fleeing domestic violence take longer to find housing than other groups without these needs.

Lang said it can be difficult to ensure some of these people receive proper supports within their housing arrangements, and the YHC is trying to avoid these people going through the “vicious cycle of being housed and then evicted.”

The next recommendation on the committee’s report says that the cap put on people’s assets who receive assistance needs to be reviewed each year.

Currently, those who have more than $100,000 in assets cannot get into YHC housing.

The last two recommendations relate to how the YHC conducts community needs assessments, and how this information is used to create capital management plans.

The initial audit found that though the YHC conducted needs analysis in several communities, there was limited evidence these studies were actually being used to make planning decisions on how money is spent.

Lang said this is because there was no consistency in how those studies were done, essentially meaning their findings didn’t have much relevance for planning.

Now, she said, the YHC is developing an assessment tool to deploy in all communities to get standardized and useful results. She said this is critical to their future work.

“It’s really exciting that we have been given the opportunity to create a standardized approach,” she said.

This, she said, should address the recommendations that urge the YHC to complete needs assessments in all the communities they operate in, and should ensure their management plans are actually based on these assessments.

Following through with all these recommendations will not solve all of the Yukon’s housing issues, or even all those identified by the OAG audit, according to Lang, but it is a step in the right direction.

“I think they’re a piece of our puzzle,” she said.

The YHC is now beginning work on a five-year strategic plan that Lang said should consider all this information and guide the next steps forward.