Pic River completes 10-year housing plan in 7 years

Pic River’s Garland Moses shared his community’s success in completing a 10-year housing plan three years early during the 16th Annual Ontario First Nations Technical Services Corporation Conference and Tradeshow.
“Out of our population of 500 people, 425 took some type of healing program,” said Garland Moses, capital housing manager with Ojibways of the Pic River. “We need to do that because in order for us to work amongst our people, we have to be healthy people.”
Moses said the population in his community has changed from 80 per cent alcohol abusers to 80 per cent sober. Traditional activities now exist in the community and groups are offered cultural programming.
“We have a lot of dry people, we have a lot of dry families because of what the social service team did and our belief that we had to be part of it,” Moses said.
The Robinson-Superior community now operates their own forestry and hydro power generating businesses and their forest fire teams work all across Canada.
“In order for us to do what we do today, we never do things on our own,” Moses said. “We have planning meetings. We try to encourage our members to be part of that, and they do become a part of that.”
Moses said the political representatives in his community have their own portfolios, and they only concentrate on that portfolio, not everything else that is happening in the community.
“We are no good to our community members unless we get them involved and ask them to guide us, ask them to help us develop programming so that we all benefit,” Moses said. “I am who I am because I have the support of the leadership, we have a proper management group set up, and more importantly, our partner is our own community members.”
Since Pic River first developed their 10-year housing plan in 2004 with a vision of building 40 new homes and renovating 60 homes, they have managed to complete most of those projects, with all the projects scheduled to be completed this year, three years ahead of schedule.
“We’re not looking for handouts, we’re not a handout people,” Moses said.
Pic River now offers community members home ownership, lease to purchase and rental housing options through financing from Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation, Aboriginal Affairs and Northern Development and Royal Bank of Canada.
The community’s next challenge is to address off-reserve housing for band members.