Thanksgiving was cancelled, again, for one Yellowknife family due to uninvited critters.
Diana Lockhart is one of many residents who suffer from poor adequate housing and is now faced with possible eviction if she chooses not to cooperate with the Yellowknife Housing Authority.
Lockhart is a single mother, originally from Lutselk’e, raising her three teenage sons in a three-bedroom apartment at Lanky court. She’s been complaining about mould, putrid odours and cockroaches in her unit for over three years.
“It’s getting to the point where I’m afraid to be cooking supper or doing laundry.”
She finds them everywhere, she says; in the fridge, baseboards, drawers and she doesn’t know where they’re coming from.
“You can’t leave food in the fridge because there was a cockroach on the butter and same with bologna, so I had to throw them out,” she says.
She claims the Housing Authority has pinned the blame on her and if she wishes to be transferred, she needs to pay for an exterminator.
Lockhart is currently unemployed and is planning to go to school sometime in the future, but due to this situation, she’s had to put her life on hold.
She believes the whole building is infested and that she feels stuck in this situation because she has had little to no communication from the property owners, Northview.
“I have nowhere else to go,” she says.
This video was taken from the Lockhart apartment unit earlier this month.
“When I move out of here, I’m not taking anything with me,” she says, “All my furniture and everything is all garbage.”
But Lockhart isn’t the only tenant struggling to be heard and ultimately transferred from her bug-infested apartment.
Karilyn Wedawin is another tenant in an apartment at Lanky court.
“This place is … awful because there’s a big floor gap between the baseboards and that’s where all the bugs and all the awful smells are coming (from),” she says.
She describes the smell as “drainage that has never been cleaned, just like old mop water.”
Wedawin says she has to run her air purifier 24/7 to mitigate some of the smell and health concerns for her and her 14-year-old son.
“I worry about his lungs, and mine because we’re constantly getting sore throat infections and feeling congested,” she says.
Wedawin says she feels like less of a priority because she only has one child.
“There are times where I can’t sleep at night,” she says, “It was so bad (I’d) get panic attacks.”
Robert Bies, CEO of the Yellowknife Housing Authority, is aware of the issue and says he’s working with Northview to remedy it.
Six complaints have come into his office in the past couple of weeks, he says.
“Sometimes tenants tend to exaggerate,” he says, although he believes the whole building to be affected.
Treatment began at Lanky Court on Oct. 14 and Bies is awaiting a report from APEX Pest Control.
In the meantime, he is asking for the tenant’s cooperation in making sure their space is tidy so APEX can get into the units.
“It can only go away if all the tenants are following the rules,” he says “They’re doing a lot of complaining, but some of them aren’t really cooperating with the instructions from pest control technicians.”
If tenants choose not to comply, all 11 public housing tenants at Lanky court risk more bugs, no transfer and possible eviction, he says.
The Housing Authority has a waitlist of over 300 people, and over 50 people awaiting transfers, which Bies says are of higher priority, due to things like disability and illnesses.
This issue was raised in the Legislative Assembly earlier this month.
MLA for Tu Nedhé-Wiilideh Richard Edjericon asked the Minister responsible for Housing, Paulie Chinna to commit to helping these families.
She told CKLB “I cannot commit to moving residents out of their units as we have a very low vacancy rate here in Yellowknife and have no available public housing units.”
