Leaving town for housing can get you booted off the waitlist, Nunavut appeals court rules

It wasn't unreasonable for the Rankin Inlet Housing Association to kick a woman off the public housing waitlist, after she left the community to find housing, the Nunavut Court of Appeal ruled on June 13.

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After learning there was public housing available in Churchill, Man., Donna Tatty left Rankin Inlet, Nunavut,in 2013 with her two kids to signa lease in a town she had no connection to, the court said.

She did not tell the Rankin housing association the move was temporary and only because she had nowhere to stay in Rankin while she was on the public housing waitlist.

But the association's board of directors did tell her if she left, they would remove her from the waitlist.

After two months, Tatty was back in Rankin,couch-surfing with friends and occasionally staying in the shelter, but the board maintained she could not regain her position on the waitlist.

Despite maintaining a mailing address in the community, she had not been a resident in the community for 12 consecutive months and was therefore ineligible, the board argued.

At issue: local authority over the waitlist

The June 13decision reviewed a judgment made in July 2015, which decided in favour of Tatty because while it said the board was well within its right to remove her from the list, it was "unreasonable" to define her as ineligible due to a temporary relocation.

"It would be tragically ironic if the very people most in need of social housing were to lose their access to it because of the dramatic steps they may take to find a place to live while they languish on the waiting list," the 2015 decision said.

Terry Rogers, the secretary manager for the housing association, says the board appealed the 2015 decision because ittook away from the board's authority to manage their waitlist.

The board appealed on the grounds the previous judge advanced his own views on the issue by saying its decision was unreasonable.

The Court of Appeal agreed the board could reasonably assume that if Tatty left town she was no longer a resident and therefore sided with the board.

"Unless the decision is unreasonable... it is not for the reviewing court to substitute its preferred outcome," the June 13decision said.

Rogers says Tatty has now been in a public housing unit for about two years.

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