This first-person column was written by Katłįà Lafferty of Yellowknife. Read more about CBC North’s first-person columns here.
I recently went to Geneva to attend the 90th session of the UN Committee on the Rights of the Child. I was there to express concern about the routine placement of children in Canada in inadequate public housing units.
My family has lived in public housing in the NWT for three generations now. For us, public housing has become an intergenerational trap.
As a child, we moved a lot. In just a few years, I lived in three separate public housing units in Sissons Court in Yellowknife. Then, when I was a teenager, I lived with my grandmother in a four-plex behind the bowling alley in downtown Yellowknife.
My grandmother made ends meet by selling traditional clothing under the table. My father didn’t live with us, but he helped out with his smuggling business. Their incomes aren’t considered legitimate, but if they were to work “real” jobs, the rent would have gone up significantly for housing that wasn’t worth the high cost of living.
This is an example of how the public housing system perpetuates crime – sometimes it’s more affordable to make a living illegally than to work full time for minimum wage while paying a stranger to watch your kids.
When I had my first son, I lived in a four-plex in downtown Yellowknife, identical to the one I once lived in with my grandmother. But I was in an unhealthy relationship and I wanted more for myself and my son. We moved to Edmonton so I could get my post-secondary education.
It meant giving up my northern residency and losing my place on a long waiting list for public housing. It’s something Northerners are routinely forced to do in their pursuit of higher education—even if they want to study on the territory, as documented in a recent external review of programming at Aurora College.
Lafferty’s daughter in their apartment in Victoria when Lafferty left the NWT for law school. (Submitted by Katłįà Lafferty)
As I write, I am staying in low-income housing with my mother in her home community of N’Dilo. I’m here for the summer to work and have nowhere to truly call home because I left the North again to pursue my post-secondary education.
It doesn’t matter that my maternal bloodline runs deep north—government-run public housing is dispossessing indigenous people of their land.
Then there are the myriad public housing policies that lack cultural sensitivity, such as the ban on pets (even therapy dogs), the ban on home businesses, the humiliating mandatory declaration of monthly income through the review of bank statements and tax returns, and the focus on overcrowding.
In my opinion, “overcrowding” is really just a lack of attention on the part of the government to include local cultural systems in planning and architecture. Growing up with my grandmother, we always had a lot of visitors, but if anyone visited for an extended period of time, they would be reported to the housing authority. Such policies prevent tenants from making their own decisions, even when it comes to helping extended relatives who may need a place to stay.
Indigenous peoples must have more decision-making power when it comes to housing in their communities by combining culturally appropriate services and home ownership in the form of Reclaimed Land: Fulfilling Canada’s Promises of Truth and Reconciliation, the Declaration of UN on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (UNDRIP) and the National Report on Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls, which mentions the need for housing for safety and security almost 400 times.
Although the federal government and the Territory Housing Corporation have begun to partner with some Indigenous groups, Housing NWT and the federal bodies that fund housing in the Territory still largely control the agenda. Indigenous-led housing, with indigenous peoples in charge of our own inherent sovereignty as we were before colonisation, would mean a loss of control by these organisations. This is a freedom my grandmother knew well. If there was indigenous-led housing all along, my family would be living off the grid and rent-free.
The Fort Garry apartment building in Yellowknife, where Lafferty once lived with her grandmother, mother and aunt. (Submitted by Katłįà Lafferty )
My grandmother used to tell me what her life was like growing up on the land as a child without running water or electricity in a time when no one claimed ownership. Land was considered communal, respected and shared. It is now bought and sold, divided and conquered.
It was hard to live on earth, but she didn’t complain. Living on the land gave her strength, purpose, belonging and a sense of empowerment – something public housing sorely lacks.
They say home is where the heart is. It is where life begins and should be a place of safety, love, health, security, happiness, respect and kinship. But here in the North, it’s hard for many local people to have a sense of belonging because of past mistakes.
It didn’t take a trip to the other side of the world and the UN to understand the importance of a child having a healthy home. It is our hope that this type of advocacy will spark change so that families in North Side public housing can find a place to truly call home.
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