This week’s report by the Auditor General calling into question management of the public housing network in Newfoundland and Labrador is being labelled an indictment of those in charge of provincial social housing.
Dan Meades, longtime advocate and board member of a transition house in the province, sees it as a real kick in the teeth given that the last AG report on the Newfoundland and Labrador Housing Corporation, done in 2008, made numerous recommendations on improving the system.
Meades says we have a poorly managed system that does not do any long-term planning. The result is that women and children leaving the transitional housing setting have no pipeline to get into social housing.
He says the corporation was funded at $34-million in 2024 to create new housing units.
“Within the time of this report, not only did they not produce any new housing units, the number of net units went down by 50. Not that they didn’t build any because they did build a few, but the number that they lost during that time was greater than the n umber they built,” says Meade.
Auditor General Hanrahan (VOCM News)
AG says situation worse than it was in 2008
AG Denise Hanrahan told VOCM Open Line with Linda Swain that it was frustrating to find that public dollars were spent in 2008 to produce a report which was largely ignored.
“In 2009, they told this office that everything had been implemented. In my opinion, it’s actually worse now than it was then,” she says.
