Housing inventory is slowly growing in Rankin Inlet, but it's going to take awhile before supply meets demand in the community, said Coun. Mike Shouldice.
The councillor said if there was a thing such as magic, and he could start adding things to the community right now, he'd start with healing facilities, followed by an increase in both housing and education.
"Housing is the main one and housing would always go a long way in the North," said Shouldice. "Housing is one of the biggest ills in the North. The topic comes up constantly at hamlet meetings.
"It's been a topic of regular discussion for the past year, in the form of people sleeping in the bank's doorway and people living in shacks on the beach during the winter."
Shouldice said one thing that has impacted housing for him during the last while has been companies buying up all the houses and inflating prices for staff housing.
He said it's actually kind of funny when a new company thinks it will avoid the housing crunch by hiring locally.
"There simply are no houses available within a reasonable turnaround time for people to get their stuff together and obtain a mortgage.
"I think with young people, something I've advocated for for a long time is a larger apartment building with bachelor and one-bedrooms.
"As much as somebody in the crowd always goes, 'party house,' and I go 'who cares?' You sort of hope they party a little.
"You go out and get a degree. We all love you because you came back, but you have nowhere to live and end up on your mom's couch with a law degree."
Shouldice said there's new money coming into town and there's lots of new builds in the community.
However, he added, he'd be curious to know what the actual numbers are when it comes to the total number of new structures being added because of existing houses being torn down or added onto.
"When you look at that, they're not really increasing the number, so I'd be curious to know what the real number is.
"If you take away a house and build a new one, we still haven't got an extra house in town.
"You know if someone says 150 new units, that doesn't mean there will be any additional units added."
Shouldice said infrastructure also plays heavily into how many new units can be added.
He said also coming into play are lot development, the sewer system, the water system and the utilidor.
"All of that is happening all at the same time. And, it's all necessary if we're going to expand or attract new businesses and they have staff housing.
"We just about poked our noses here a couple of years ago, where they could build all these new units, say in Area 5, and they could run water to them, but they couldn't flush because the sewer was about 94 per cent full.
"I would say it's (supply meeting demand) at least several years down the road."
