NWT RESEARCH DATABASE

Regions: Sahtu Settlement Area

Tags: social sciences, housing, governance, policy, self-government, self-determination

Objective(s): To examine and understand how the self-governed delivery of housing in Fort Good Hope by the K’asho Got’ine Housing Society, including the delivery of the transitional housing program, will be promoted or hindered by the current system of governance and policy in place.

Project Description: This licence has been issued for the scientific research application No.4867. The purpose of this research is to meet the research needs of the community of Fort Good Hope as the Principal Investigator (PI) explore in collaboration with the K’asho Got’ine Housing Society (KGHS) how their community-led social housing program can become sustainable. The complex geographies of the housing crisis in the Canadian North are shaped by increasing evidence of housing insecurity and homelessness, both visible and hidden. In Fort Good Hope, a Dene community in the Sahtu Region of the Northwest Territories, the KGHS is attempting to tackle their crisis of homelessness and inadequate housing with a strategy centred around a contextualized understanding of ‘home’. This stands amongst a wider set of efforts to respond to the self-declared housing crisis led by the not-for-profit housing society, including the hosting of a three-day forum on homelessness and housing in Fort Good Hope, and the installation of a sawmill. This research unfolds around the thematic area of housing policy and self-governance. The PI seeks to examine and understand how the self-governed delivery of housing in Fort Good Hope by the KGHS, including the delivery of the transitional housing program, will be promoted or hindered by the current system of governance and policy in place. The PI aims to realize an overarching project objective to bring housing and self-determination into conversation by addressing the following research questions: 1) What is the current process of decision-making required to deliver housing in Fort Good Hope? 2) What are the key policy and governance barriers that prevent self-determination of housing in Fort Good Hope? 3) How might housing policy and current structures of governance be adapted to better support ‘home’ as it is articulated in Fort Good Hope? and, 4) How is housing policy itself an active site of engagement for understanding contemporary relationships between the territorial government and the self-government in Fort Good Hope? The collective hope of this research is that by mapping out the governing and decision-making processes implicated in the self-governed delivery of housing, it will facilitate progress towards Fort Good Hope’s vision of self-determination and ultimately home at both an individual and collective scale. For this research the PI will conduct a series of semi-structured interviews via telephone or the online videotelephone platform WebEx, with housing providers and policy makers, and representatives from Indigenous, territorial and federal governments. Interviews will be conducted in order to understand and ultimately “map” the experience of delivering housing within the northern governance system. Interviews conducted with select governing actors involved in the delivery of northern housing either at present or in the past, at both the community, territorial and federal scale, as well as housing providers and policymakers at both the community and territorial levels, will help to reveal the governing dynamics between the territorial and community governance structures. Semi-structured interviews will be employed as the interview method for the informal space of social interaction they create, and as such the opportunity for participants to share the nuanced ways they experience and make sense of the system through which housing in Fort Good Hope is managed, and home is produced (or not). The PI will make use of a flexible interview guide that includes questioning on the participant’s role in and experience of delivering housing or housing-related support in Fort Good Hope, or the Northwest Territories more broadly for territorial actors; their thoughts on how supportive the system is for the self-government of housing; and how they think governance structures could better promote ‘home’ and as such self-determination. The data collected from the interviews will be recorded through a device supported by the telecommunication infrastructures in use, and then transcribed and coded to uncover the individual or collective stories that will shed light on the themes that are to be addressed. Because a major objective of this project is to assist the work of the K’asho Got’ine Housing Society, the PI will focus on providing ongoing updates and feedback to its directors. These updates will occur during conference call meetings that the PI will hold every couple of months, where the Society will have the opportunity to ask questions and provide feedback to ensure that the work continues to be relevant to the needs. The PI will also provide the KGHS with summary reports of chapters prior to the full completion of the thesis, and eventually a copy of the final written theses for them to provide feedback on prior to documents being finalized and circulated. Interview participants will be sent the final transcription of their interviews for their personal records and will be sent a summary report of the final analysis of the data that is collected. The fieldwork for this study will be conducted from April 20, 2021 to December 31, 2021.