There are a lot of diverse housing needs in first nations communities. We're working on doing a housing needs assessment right now and it's something we're trying to seek out funding for. I think that would really help the different first nations to understand what the actual need is. We have done a few studies on the need, and elders of course are the priority. Then we have youth and working families as our priority, but that could be different in other communities. We currently don't have housing for our seniors. For our seniors, unfortunately there's not a lot of funding for them to come home and get the long-term support they need in the different housing model types.
Taking a bit of a flexible approach to the housing programs and policies would be great in the sense that, again, everybody's need is very different. However, I think what's missing in a lot of the different programs that are coming out is the support piece. It could be housing just for the structure, but we need to come home and do healing from all the generations of trauma. How are we going to get to home ownership and intergenerational wealth if we don't deal with the current issues we're facing within our communities? We need those supports that are devolved into those programs. Along with that, what I'm finding with a lot of the different programs as well is that they're designed to address the income levels of non-indigenous communities, meaning that CMHC might say the rents are based on the CMHC average for North Vancouver, but the CMHC average for North Vancouver does not reflect the income levels of our community and the need in our community.
I think it's just about taking an approach of, possibly, flexibility and building in infrastructure, and then of course possibly having indigenous people at the table when you're creating housing programs or working on policy.