Creating expertise in First Nation housing in Canada

A key goal for Sylvia Olsen was to establish a national First Nations building Inspector program in education, an accredited course in housing management, and Olsen was involved with Nancy Hamilton at Vancouver Island University (VIU) in developing the curriculum for housing managers to become certified First Nation housing inspectors.

Olsen knows there is a patchwork of regulations in First Nation housing. There is no national building code on-reserve and regulations about housing are done reserve by reserve. What are the main impediments creating national standards for building inspections and housing departments on Indian Reservations in Canada?

Obviously first and foremost it's money. Building codes and related inspections and enforcement are done reserve by reserve. There is no cash to pay for education and salary of qualified building inspectors. It is the opinion of people like Olsen that it's time to bite the bullet, for government to implement a wide-spread national blitz to create housing codes for First Nations equal to the National Building Code of Canada. Olsen believes that some will continue to refuse, and it will take more time and effort, but it requires something other than the piecemeal approach.

"What will force it is new home ownership coming on reserve, a trend that is occurring amongst both young and old who are getting private mortgages." Olsen suggests they will be concerned with protecting the assets they have purchased. "Band offices by and large have no capacity to do it, managing properties does not take priority in council and Bands often lack administrative capacity for managing residential and commercial real estate."

It takes doing the legwork on training to build capacity to administer codes, including those which apply to people with mortgages for example.

Development of housing is done amid a lack of qualifications where building inspection may not be entirely desirable by Band Councils, which is ultimately why the regulatory approach has to be national.

Olsen was finishing a Ph.D on housing, and continues to teach and consult on Aboriginal housing around Canada, was a course facilitator with VIU, where the university has had very active students from around B.C.. Housing managers are taking the course. Some started and found it was more to handle than they thought, and others have remained dedicated to the present program.

They are delivering the course over about three months on-line, and VIU is receiving interest right across the country. Olsen says VIU has been persistent in delivering the program. She has been across the country to numerous reserves, witnessing housing managers improving housing in First Nation communities. She has traveled to distant points, including northern Ontario for two months where portfolios of Bands contain every housing hurdle imaginable.

Olsen comes by her experience in First Nation housing from more than three decades living on Tsarlip Indian Reserve near Victoria, B.C., “I met my husband and moved there when I was 17 years old and I raised my family there,” she says. “It's a very nice place to live. I worked in housing at Tsarlip beginning in the early 1990s.”

The creation of accredited courses was initially pursued by the First Nation National Housing Managers Association (FNNHMA), now defunct. Olsen was a founding member of FNNHMA in 2006. She worked in provincial and national Aboriginal housing committees over the years. She immersed in the study of First Nation housing based on the history of Aboriginal housing development in Canada. Olsen has other interests, is a storyteller at heart, was a writer-in-residence at Carson Graham School in North Vancouver, B.C.. “I am a member of the Victoria Storytellers Guild.”

Olsen worked with Mike King a Housing Manager of Beausoliel First Nation in southern Ontario since 2000, and Nancy Hamilton at VIU Distance Education Department. King says, “We work-shopped the idea of a housing managers certificate program with CMHC when we started in 2006. We received funding from CMHC to visit housing trade shows and conferences, get a website established, and start developing a proper job description for housing management.”

King says, “It's really all about property management on-reserve. Property management comes into it because the area of responsibility grows when you consider the tens of millions of dollars in property management we are discussing. It involves rents, mortgages, and asset management. A lot of these administrative functions are being done on a part-time basis." Much more is needed to be done.

FNNHMA may have folded but success was in the wind for Olsen. They developed the program at VIU. The first module of certification was piloted in three locations around B.C., in 2008/09. Fifteen students took the course in Nanaimo, and other classes were held in Terrace and Kamloops. She was initial facilitator teaching the course in the hope that along with certification, a complete curricula including finance, administration, communications, and construction management would be developed. Once it was all put together, VIU would work to encourage national certification.

The Atlantic provinces received pilot programs. Pilot courses were delivered in Moncton and Halifax. They were coast to coast with the program and there was strong interest in Quebec Aboriginal housing for working out the language questions to certify in Quebec. Organizers have always felt the urgency to get the program going is on a national basis.

VIU rolled out a full-time program and the way it stands is VIU delivers B.C. First Nations Building Inspector courses in a Full-time Certificate Program. First Nations Building Inspector is a program designed to provide participants with specific skills for successful employment as a Building Inspector.

VIU dedicated resources to developing a unique program. The Nanaimo-based university applied for program funding as an exceptional school. At the same time they recognized it was a First Nations initiative. One of the main battles was to establish appropriate financial remuneration for certified housing managers.

“Finding the wage for certified housing managers is one of the challenges. You have precedents out there but a great deal depends on the financial state of the Band.” Even so, “Across Canada we have some of the most amazing people working in housing management on reserve,” and, Olsen noted, “The force of their expertise and a certification process will help make housing management certification a national reality," eventually.

Housing on-reserve is changing. “Lots of people are working to resolve the structural issues in First Nation housing. Poverty remains the main problem in housing. Another problem is that housing remains entirely government-run,” whereas other social activities like health and education have been taken over by the First Nations. “Aboriginal housing will eventually be,” she says, “under the direct control of First Nation leadership.”

Some of the emerging leadership came from FNNBOA, "It's been a long time coming," said Richard (Bud) Jobin (who passed away in 2015), regarding education initiatives to certify housing management officers in First Nations. Jobin had said, "We have supported them from the beginning." Jobin was director of FNNBOA and was working for a over a decade to arrange education of First Nation building officers qualified for housing inspection.

FNNBOA focused its effort with people like Nancy Hamilton at Vancouver Island University to make the housing management and inspection skills transferrable to the mainstream economy. FNNBOA was dedicated to higher standards, and Jobin believed they needed the inspector course at VIU to deliver transferrable skills. Jobin had noticed that the province of B.C. was supportive of FNNBOA in the process of seeking national standards for First Nation housing professionals.

FNNBOA Winter 2014 newsletter contained a stark reminder of the necessity for change in First Nation housing standards, "Cold winter weather in Canada conjures up images of skating on outdoor rinks and tobogganing. Unfortunately, it also brings fire losses and deaths, especially in First Nations communities. This happened recently in Pelican Narrows, Sask., where two boys died in a house fire. Fire deaths among Canada’s First Nations people are the highest in North America. The fire incidence rate is2.4 times greater per capita than that for the rest of Canada, the fire damage per unit 2.1 times greater, the fire injury rate 2.5 times greater, and the death rate 10.4 times greater."


Freelance Writing by Mack McColl

Don’t Let a Nickel Hold Up a Dollar FNNBOA President's Message, Spring 2014

RETROSPECTIVE

 Housing inspection services delivered by FNNBOA to First Nations communities

A national non-profit organization is fighting in the trenches of First Nation housing. First Nations National Building Officers Association (FNNBOA) is a volunteer organization that represents a profession offering technical services in residential construction and renovation on-reserve.

FNNBOA members are qualified to deal with house plan reviews, inspections, recommendation of repairs, and they provide technical advocacy and advisory services for on-reserve housing.

Chief Keith Maracle, Tyendinaga, Ontario, is secretary of the volunteer board, “There are approximately 250 to 300 employed in this sector,” a small number in relation to the number of First Nation Indian Act-governed communities in Canada, no less than 700 inhabited Indian Reservations.

FNNBOA faces a peculiar challenge to expand the role of its officers in First Nation housing, “We are seen as regulatory,” said Chief Maracle, and regulations are apparently not something to be desired in the fractious world of First Nation housing.

FNNBOA members are qualified to inspect housing construction, “We have occupational standards, a code of ethics, and certification procedures to inspect houses on reserve.” Chief Maracle says FNNBOA members are qualified to support CMHC and mortgage approvals, INAC leasehold guarantee programs, and reports to Environment Canada.

Richard ‘Bud’ Jobin is co-President of FNNBOA who hails from central Alberta. Since 2002 when they laid the organizational groundwork, these two men have been advocates of professional First Nation housing services, “Certified inspection of First Nation housing is becoming a compliance issue,” says Bud, “which impacts on mortgage and insurance.”

It may not be here but the age of reason is coming over First Nation housing policy and FNNBOA intends to have First Nation housing inspection services in the ready. They have training affiliations with George Brown University, Humber College, NAIT, and Vancouver Island University to produce qualified First Nation Housing inspectors.

Bank creating viable housing market

Royal Bank of Canada illustrates the growing importance of certified inspection services in First Nation housing. RBC introduced a program this spring to help First Nations capitalize on economic growth opportunities.

RBC announced a new mortgage program called the Leasehold Mortgage Program to, “provide First Nations members with greater flexibility and choice when it comes to financing the purchase or construction of a home.” It also helps create marketable housing in reserve communities.

“RBC has worked with First Nations leaders/governments for many years to find and provide options for financing a home in the same manner that is offered off a reserve,” said David Cutway, manager, Residential Mortgages Policy, RBC.

“This new CMHC default-insured program . . . allows qualified borrowers on qualified reserve lands to obtain a home mortgage, benefitting both the purchaser and the First Nation community.”

Financing of on-reserve housing has been limited in the past, said Mr. Cutway. “For example, First Nations members had to obtain a band or Ministerial Loan Guarantee (MLG) to secure a loan to purchase a home on reserve land. In addition, the First Nation government was responsible for the construction, maintenance and repair of these homes.”

The Leasehold Mortgage Program can help First Nations improve economic development through the construction of new homes, renovations to existing homes, purchases of new or existing homes, and construction of duplexes to four-plexes.

First Nations communities may also use the program to attract non-Aboriginal homebuyers to properties developed on leasehold land, such as the housing development projects undertaken by the Westbank and Tzeachten First Nations, both of which are located in British Columbia. Ed note There is no advertising sold in support of all the research and writing, so feel free to donate in aid of the important message delivered:

Lateral Violence in Indigenous Life in Canada

 

David Segerts is a man who lives for positive change in Canadian society. Sitting one day with Segerts in his tastefully decorated apartment I felt surrounded by an orderly nature given to his lifestyle and was treated to his impeccable manners. I was also given a taste of his lifetime of memories before he talked about the really important issues he works on.

Segerts was born in 1960,  at the time Uranium City, Saskatchewan, was a city of 5,000 souls, and he grew up to see the mining property turn into a ghost town. Uranium City was shutdown in 1982 but by that time he was ready to move on.

"I am a Dene/Cree but I generally say I am Dene because I look almost exactly like my Dene father." He shows a photograph that proves he is the spitting image of his dad. "I dropped out of school when I was in grade 8 and went back for adult upgrading by the age of 25 at Alberta Vocational Centre in Calgary. AVC was a good learning experience although the facility lacked a First Nation student organization so I helped put one together. We held dances, fundraisers, and hosted a room that the school donated, which became a gathering place for all nations and a useful foot in the door for First Nation students."

A short time later Segerts began to study something very important in First Nation life in Canada, the tactics of oppression known as lateral violence that are especially prevalent in systemic racism. It is this lateral violence that explains the extraordinary incarceration rates and recidivism in crime for the First Nation people of Canada. As high as 50 percent of the prisoners in Canada either male or female are First Nation or Aboriginal people. For these kinds of disparities to exist in a segment of society that is less than 5 percent of the total population, the problems have to run very deep indeed.

"Lateral violence goes on in every First Nation organization and starts with arguments like, 'My family is better than theirs,'" he says. "It is important within the system of racism to get us fighting amongst each other. We are actually born into it, however, because the system is designed that way. Public awareness is the only way to address it," says Segerts.

"The methods of lateral violence include, backstabbing, gossip, infighting, shaming, humiliating, damaging comments, belittling, and sometimes violent behaviour." Other terms for what is happening to First Nations in Canada include auto-genocide and horizontal violence, he said. These terms are applied mostly to the members of oppressed groups in society, and he explained, "I didn't really understand lateral violence until I was about 30 years of age. I rarely discussed it until I did the research first. Lateral violence is designed to prevent efforts to heal the effects of oppression."

Lateral violence teaches people to disrespect and deny the rights of an oppressed group, to destroy values and beliefs. Practitioners will engage in infighting, faulting finding, and scapegoating, raising the stakes of competition via jealousy and envy. The attacks are made upon those who already possess low self esteem and further attacks lower a person's self worth.

Ultimately the goal is to make the victim take blame for the continuous putdowns, "This is the nature of oppression," says Segerts. "It is a denial of their self and humanity. They think they have become objects unworthy of respect. They fail from the inability to recognize themselves as human beings. They become convinced that the oppressor owns them, and often the oppressor does own them through financial dependencies upon welfare and personal dependencies upon drugs or alcohol."

He says, “When my son was 11 years old I brought him to Calgary to live with me, and after a few short weeks he told me, ‘Dad, I didn’t realize that Indians didn’t drink. I didn’t realize the Indian men work.’” It was another stunning learning experience about lateral violence for Segerts the father who has never spent time stuck in welfare programs but knows on reserves and in some urban communities it can become a long-running generational trap.

“People who feel dependent suffer a lack of personal power. When they lose power they will see their cultural identity eliminated and be unable to stop it,” he says. Many times the First Nations in Canada have been known to hide their own beliefs or adopt the beliefs of an oppressing society. “They were dislocated from the land and suffered breakdown of family structure during the Residential School years. Indigenous people were removed from families at age four in some cases, only to be afflicted with physical, mental, sexual, and social abuses.”

His own mother had a safety pin jammed through her tongue by nuns at one such school, then was made to sit facing a corner in a classroom for speaking her Cree language. “There were many children killed by torture,” he asserts, “and other families were disrupted by one child being raised in a Catholic school and another being raised in a United Church run school. In fact the Residential School system was a highly specialized form of lateral violence.”

The lateral violence design for First Nations people results in a distrust of First Nation leaders by their own people. “It results in a distrust of those who might emerge to help," he says. "Rising stars are severely restricted or punished. Leaders who make any difference are fired and persecuted. Incompetent leaders are recruited and promoted by the oppressors. Dividing and conquering is the main process used by the oppressors.”

Segerts needs to write a book with a biographical story line if he hasn't already. He was trained as a technical engineer at BCIT and NAIT, then, while living in Vancouver, he entered the film industry, first as an actor, then as a producer and director. When we last spoke he was running a youth-at-risk employment initiative that operates across Canada for First Nations. Remember the name David Segerts because the book would be an important read. If you know David Segerts personally, put the suggestion to him again.