Looking to rebuild, Enterprise residents still struggling to get land title

A group of Enterprise residents say they have paid off their equity leases – long-term leases that should result in ownership – but still don’t have land title. That makes rebuilding from a wildfire complicated.

One resident said he won’t rebuild his home in Enterprise until he owns his property.

“They’ve been horsing around with this, been long before the fire they were horsing around,” Cliff Kimble said of his struggles with the territorial government to get title to his lot.

Kimble said he made the last payment on his equity lease in July 2017, which he said should have ended with the NWT government transferring land title to him. But more than six years later, he’s still waiting.

“I’ve been there since ’79 or ’80. I paid my equity lease off,” Kimble said. “I was supposed to get the title, and then, still nothing.”

Kimble was one of several residents that lost his home and business in a wildfire that destroyed much of the hamlet in August. He’s waiting to hear back from the territorial government about whether he will receive disaster aid.

But Kimble said if he doesn’t get title to the land first, he won’t spend “one red cent” rebuilding in Enterprise.

“I lost a lot of pictures and that kind of stuff, memorabilia from my parents and everything,” Kimble said. “Dealing with the government is just [the] more frustrating part of it.”

While Kimble said he lost his original equity lease in the fire, he still has email records. That includes an email confirming his lot passed an inspection in 2021 and another stating he qualified for a fee simple title application for commissioner’s land, which email records indicate he submitted in 2021.

Kimble said adding to his frustration is that a plot of land was sold near Enterprise for development several years ago. He said that has made it increasingly difficult to wait for the sale process on his lot to end.

According to CBC, Aurora Wood Pellets Ltd. bought 320 hectares of land from the hamlet in 2016.

Concerns with inequities in land ownership in Enterprise were identified by the territorial housing corporation in their 2022 housing plan for the community. The plan said while many people with equity leases did not own land, the hamlet had acquired fee simple land that could be sold to residents.

“As new lots become available via fee simple, this may create an inequity in the community with current homeowners still unable to own the land their homes are located on, while new homeowners are able to,” the document states.

Enterprise mayor Mike St Amour is also waiting for land title since he paid off his equity lease more than 16 years ago.

“I went through all the paperwork, and as far back as 2007 is when it started,” St Amour said. “Most of the equity leases, they’re around that time too.”

In 2015, the NWT Department of Lands held a public meeting where 60 residents gave feedback on a variety of topics, including concerns that the territory would not honour equity leases.

St Amour said that’s a concern he still has, saying residents are being “duped” by the territorial government’s delays.

“On our side, we’ve paid everything,” he said. “They’ve been sidestepping it ever since.”

Thomas Bentham, a spokesperson for the Department of Environment and Climate Change, said in an email while equity lease holders may have paid off their lease early, leases remains active until the end of their term.

Once an equity lease ends, lease holders must apply for fee simple title to begin the transfer process, he said, which the department must then confirm as eligible. Bentham added that transfers are subject to a standard sales process unless a lease includes other provisions.

Equity leases in the NWT

A 2019 housing assessment identified 19 Enterprise residents as equity lease holders. But St Amour said there are 26 or 27 properties on the equity lease list in his community.

Responding to questions in the Legislative Assembly in 2017, then-lands minister Louis Sebert said that the “best solution” to equity leases across the territory would be for lessees to own the property.

“I had thought that this was not a particularly large issue, thinking that there might not be very many of these equity leases,” Sebert said at the time. “It turns out that there are hundreds.”

In 2018, Sebert identified 245 equity leases in existence. Cabin Radio was unable to independently verify the number of equity leases in the NWT.

Sebert previously said there are several complications preventing the transfer of land title to equity lease holders.

Some equity leases do not clearly define whether the leaseholder would acquire ownership at the lease’s end, he said, and some lots are located in areas under negotiation with Indigenous governments.

Land title was identified as an important factor in home ownership during the 19th Legislative Assembly.

“Fee simple title is the foundation of any housing market,” Rylund Johnson, then MLA for Yellowknife North, said in 2021.

It also “creates buyer certainty when selling their homes, and simplifies access to financing,” according to the territorial housing corporation’s housing plan for Enterprise.

That was recently echoed by mayor St Amour.

“With an equity lease, every dollar I sink into the property, I can take that to the bank as collateral,” he said. “On a lease, I can’t.”

What now?

Equity leases were previously managed and administered through the Department of Lands until it merged with the Department of Environment and Natural Resources in April 2023, to create the Department of Environment and Climate Change. The new department is now responsible for overseeing the transfer of land title to equity lease holders.

Enterprise residents have two methods for securing land title at the end of their equity lease. They can purchase the land directly from the territorial government at the “most recent assessed value at the time of the transfer,” according to department spokesperson Bentham. Alternately, residents can go through the hamlet to acquire title.

Enterprise council is in the midst of negotiating a land transfer agreement with the department for more than 20 leaseholders. The plan is for those lots to be transferred to leaseholders for $1.

The hamlet began negotiations with the territory more than 10 years ago, according to Blair Porter, Enterprise’s senior administrative officer.

“We’re in discussions with our legal team about making sure that everything is the way it should be with the sale agreements,” Porter said. “We’ve done all that we can here at the hamlet to try and facilitate it, to push it through.

“Any time there’s been a lull, it’s been on the GNWT.”

Presently, the environment department said it has drafted 13 sale agreements for the hamlet’s review, and is working on seven more. It received another request from the hamlet, which requires consultation before additional sale agreements can be completed, department spokesperson Mike Westwick said.

Kimble said he is now going through the hamlet to negotiate title for his lot.

“When you’re fighting that kind of a battle, it gets weary after a while.”