Thank you very much for that question. I appreciate being able to answer that, in the London West area specifically, we do have a number of housing members, specifically in the Native Inter-Tribal Housing Co-operative along with Four Feathers Housing in the city of London. The direct connection between those was that Native Inter-Tribal had families as its mandate. We had to start dealing with the pressures being organized and being impacted by our students and our young children and grandchildren being able to go off to get higher education, leaving the housing unit as basically an empty nest.
As a result of that, Native Inter-Tribal Housing Co-operative was able to take the reins going forward, which involved the organization Four Feathers. Through that, we obtained the federal, provincial and municipal funding to be able to establish that particular housing co-operative, which housed mainly seniors and people over the age of 40. Therefore, a lot of that was then able to benefit the elders and the seniors in our community.
As with all other housing co-operatives and specifically in terms of indigenous needs, there is definitely more of a need, and more housing assistance and more housing need to be created and developed for our seniors, specifically for our elders. We know from the statistics that 85% are living off reserve, in terms of the members from the different communities, and that they're in urban settings. Given that we are dealing with an aging population and trying to deal with their needs, we definitely need to develop more seniors housing and be able to continue to support Four Feathers Housing Co-operative to meet those needs and address the assistance that is directly needed under accessibility and meet other needs in terms of affordability. We also need to maintain their traditions and their ceremonies and have space to do that.