The NWT’s budget has new housing cash. What will it buy?

The budget passed by NWT MLAs on Thursday comes with major new funding for housing, spread over three years. Here’s what to expect from that cash.

New money will arrive over the next three years.

Finance minister Caroline Wawzonek has added $41.6 million to the 2025-26 budget for housing, which – on top of existing commitments – will give Housing NWT $50 million to spend that year.

Another $50 million will be assigned in each of the next two years, for a total spend of $150 million.

The NWT government thinks it has a housing infrastructure deficit – in other words, a total cost to fix existing housing issues – of about $200 million.

In that context, Wawzonek said on Thursday, $150 million “makes a huge dent over these three years.”

What’s the overarching plan?

In the first year, the spending is expected to focus on modernizing and improving existing homes. Wawzonek called this work “the major renovations that keep a house from becoming a boarded-up, derelict unit.”

Wawzonek said renovations to about 175 homes can be funded through the first year’s money, with about another 47 homes replaced.

“That’s a significant change in that space to make sure houses aren’t being boarded up, aren’t looking derelict, aren’t bringing down communities, and they’re actually going to be available for people to live in, use, and move away from waitlists,” she said.

Until Thursday’s new money came along, Inuvik Boot Lake MLA Denny Rodgers said, the NWT did not have the funding to get large-scale public housing maintenance projects done.

“Now we have that funding, and now we can open up these units and we can reduce waitlists in the communities,” he said.

Housing minister Lucy Kuptana told reporters on Thursday night: “This critical investment will support the replacement of aged public housing units and address needed repairs to improve the overall quality of our territory’s public housing portfolio – and create numerous economic opportunities for NWT businesses.”

Will local jobs be created?

Kuptana mentioned economic opportunities because the GNWT hopes the vast majority of this money will be spent locally, hiring NWT contractors to get the repair work done. (Now is a good time to finish your trades certification.)

Spending this money in the next year “can have an impact on small businesses, medium businesses, Indigenous businesses and development corporations,” said Wawzonek, particularly in a “time of uncertainty” where nobody really knows what will happen with tariffs and a broader trade war.

“So much of the housing portfolio and capital is delivered by local businesses,” said Wawzonek, adding that this money lets the territorial government “do what we know we can – what we can control – to help support them.”

She said more than 90 percent of Housing NWT’s current contracts are delivered locally.

Kuptana said some of that spending could go to companies like Metcan, a Hay River-based home-building firm, or the new Fort Good Hope construction centre.

She added the money could be used to “piggy-back” on federal money already flowing to Indigenous governments, like a package of more than $90 million to be split among Indigenous communities that NWT MP Michael McLeod announced earlier this week.

“We want to make sure we’re doing this efficiently and effectively, rolling out houses across the territory in every community,” Kuptana said.

Wawzonek said the sheer amount of money being set aside for this work will help by allowing economies of scale – buying in bulk, for example, to drive overall prices down.

“It’s huge, and it’s an economic boom for regions as well,” said Rodgers at a rare joint press conference on Thursday, featuring the two ministers as well as the Inuvik Boot Lake MLA in his role as chair of the Standing Committee on Accountability and Oversight, which includes all 11 regular MLAs.

“This does provide an economic benefit and we are spending that money,” said Rodgers. “So when you talk about potentially using some of our debt to fund these, this is good debt. This is capital projects, and this is work that’s very important.”

Wait, there’s debt involved?

The NWT government just had its federally imposed debt cap increased from $1.8 billion to $3.1 billion.

While the territory has no desire to use all of that extra borrowing room at once, it does give the GNWT some breathing space to make investments like this without worrying that it’s going to run out of money.

There are ways that the promised housing money could be funded by moving other pots of cash around, but Wawzonek said it is likely to be “part of the debt we take on over time.”

“But I think the point’s already been made,” she added after Rodgers made his remarks about an economic boom. “When you’re taking on debt to build capital, it’s very different than taking on debt to run your operations.”

Kuptana said the GNWT had gone to Ottawa last October to try to find federal funding for this kind of work, but had returned empty-handed.

“We’re ponying up the money to do this,” she said. “We’re doing this. We’re stepping up, and we want to partner with others.”

Where will they start?

There is no home-by-home, community-by-community list immediately available.

However, Kuptana gave reporters a sense of what to expect.

She and Wawzonek said the plan was data-driven, using information from territory-wide assessments to understand where the need is most urgent. The data behind that had been shared with all MLAs, Wawzonek said.

“We have many homes that are 50 years-plus across the Northwest Territories, in some communities like Fort Smith, Hay River, Inuvik, Tuktoyaktuk, Ulukhaktok and Behchokǫ̀,” said Kuptana, referring to the age of those units.

“We need to have a targeted investment in many of these homes, because many of them are not efficient or effective any more.

“We’re pouring $12 million into fuel subsidies every year for housing units across the territory. If we can decrease that, we can have more builds, or we could have more modernization and improvement projects across the territory.”

All regions will see investment, Kuptana pledged.

“This year, it’s focused on the 50 year-plus builds. I mean, we’ve had these in our inventory for 50-plus years. We have families living in them,” she said. “We need to replace many of these units. We just haven’t had the funding to do it.”

Rodgers said the money “goes a long way” toward what regular MLAs had sought to address the NWT’s housing crisis.

Now, he told reporters, “we need to see it through and work with cabinet to make sure the money is being spent.”

“Sometimes it’s difficult to spend money. Sometimes it’s difficult to find contractors,” he said. “That’s going to be the key now, ensuring this money gets spent.”